
Copight'N"- 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSKR 



A GERMAN DESERTER'S 
WAR EXPERIENCE 



A GERMAN DESERTER'S 
WAR EXPERIENCE 




TRANSLATED BY J. KOETTGEN 



NEW YORK 

B. W. HUEBSCH 

MCMXVII 



COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY 
B. W. HUEBSCH 






MAY 1 7 1917 



PKINTKD IN THE UNITED STATES OB" AMERICA 

©CI.A4B0888 



11 



I 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 

The following narrative first appeared in German in 
the columns of the New Yorker Volkszeitung, the prin- 
cipal organ of the German speaking Socialists in the 
United States. Its author, who escaped from Germany 
and military service after 14 months of fighting in 
France, is an intelligent young miner. He does not 
wish to have his name made public, fearing that those 
who will be offended by his frankness might vent their 
wrath on his relatives. Since his arrival in this country 
his friends and acquaintances have come to know him 
as an upright and truthful man whose word can be re- 
lied upon. 

The vivid description of the life of a common German 
soldier in the present war aroused great interest when 
the story presented in these pages to the English speak- 
ing reader was published in serial form. For here was 
an historian of the war who had been through the hor- 
rors of the carnage as one of the " Huns," one of the 
" Boches " ; a soldier who had not abdicated his reason ; 
a warrior against his will, who nevertheless had to con- 
form to the etiquette of war ; a hater of militarism for 
whom there was no romance in war, but only butchery 
and brutality, grime and vermin, inhuman toil and 
degradation. Moreover, he was found to be no mean 
observer of men and things. His technical training at 
a school of mining enabled him to obtain a much clearer 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 

understanding of the war of position than the average 
soldier possesses. 

Most soldiers who have been in the war and have 
written down their experiences have done so in the cus- 
tomary way, never questioning for a moment the moral 
justification of war. Not so our author. He could not 
persuade his conscience to make a distinction between 
private and public morality, and the angle from which 
he views the events he describes is therefore entirely dif- 
ferent from that of other actual observers of and par- 
ticipators in war. His story also contains the first 
German description of the retreat of the Teutonic ar- 
mies after the battle of the Marne. The chief value of 
this soldier's narrative lies, however, in his destructive, 
annihilating criticism of the romance and fabled virtues 
of war. If some of the incidents related in this book 
appear to be treated too curtly it is solely due to this 
author's limited literary powers. If, for instance, he 
does not dwell upon his inner experiences during his ter- 
rible voyage to America in the coal bunker of a Dutch 
ship it is because he is not a literary artist, but a simple 
workman. 

The translator hopes that he has succeeded in repro- 
ducing faithfully the substance and the spirit of the 
story, and that this little book will contribute in com- 
bating one of the forces that make for war — popular 
ignorance of war's realities. Let each individual fully 
grasp and understand the misery, degradation, and de- 
struction that await him in war, and the barbarous 
ordeal by carnage will quickly become the most unpopu- 
lar institution on earth. 

J. KOETTGEN. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Translator's Preface .... . ,. .. v 

I Marching into Belgium . . . .. ,.. ... 1 

II Fighting in Belgium . 8 

III Shooting Civilians in Belgium ... 23 

IV German Soldiers and Belgian Civilians . 32 
V The Horrors of Street Fighting . . .38 

VI Crossing the Meuse 45 

VII In Pursuit 49 

VIII Nearly Buried Alive on the Battlefield 58 

IX Soldiers Shooting Their Own Officers . 65 

X Sacking Suippes 73 

XI Marching to the Battle of the Marne — 

Into the Trap 82 

XII At the Marne — In the Maw of Death . 89 

XIII The Rout of the Marne 99 

XIV The Flight from the Marne . . . .108 

XV At the End of the Flight 120 

XVI The Beginning of Trench Warfare . .130 

XVII Friendly Relations with the Enemy . 142 

XVIII Fighting in the Argonnes 148 

XIX Christmas in the Trenches 156 

XX The " Itch "—A Savior ...... 164 

XXI In the Hell of Vauquois 172 

XXII Sent on Furlough 178 

XXIII The Flight to Holland ....... 183 

XXIV America and Safety . , . . . * .189 



A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR 
EXPERIENCE 



MARCHING INTO BELGIUM 

At the end of July our garrison at Koblenz was 
feverishly agitated. Part of our men were seized by 
an indescribable enthusiasm, others became subject to 
a feeling of great depression. The declaration of war 
was in the air. I belonged to those who were depressed. 
For I was doing my second year of military service and 
was to leave the barracks in six weeks' time. Instead 
of the long wished-for return home war was facing me. 

Also during my military service I had remained the 
anti-militarist I had been before. I could not imagine 
what interest I could have in the mass murder, and I 
also pointed out to my comrades that under all circum- 
stances war was the greatest misfortune that could hap- 
pen to humanity. 

Our sapper battalion, No. 30, had been in feverish 
activity five days before the mobilization; work was 
being pushed on day and night so that we were fully 
prepared for war already on the 23rd of July, and on 
the 30th of July there was no person in our barracks 
who doubted that war would break out. Moreover, 
there was the suspicious amiability of the officers and 
sergeants, which excluded any doubt that any one 

1 



2 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

might still have had. Officers who had never before 
replied to the salute of a private soldier now did so with 
the utmost attention. Cigars and beer were distributed 
in those days by the officers with great, uncommon 
liberality, so that it was not surprising that many sol- 
diers were scarcely ever sober and did not realize the 
seriousness of the situation. But there were also oth- 
ers. There were soldiers who also in those times of 
good-humor and the grinning comradeship of officer 
and soldier could not forget that in military service 
they had often been degraded to the level of brutes, and 
who now thought with bitter feelings that an oppor- 
tunity might perhaps be offered in order to settle ac- 
counts. 

The order of mobilization became known on the 1st 
of August, and the following day was decided upon as 
the real day of mobilization. But without awaiting the 
arrival of the reserves we left our garrison town on 
August 1st. Who was to be our " enemy " we did not 
know; Russia was for the present the only country 
against which war had been declared. 

We marched through the streets of the town to the 
station between crowds of people numbering many 
thousands. Flowers were thrown at us from every win- 
dow ; everybody wanted to shake hands with the depart- 
ing soldiers. All the people, even soldiers, were weep- 
ing. Many marched arm in arm with their wife or 
sweetheart. The music played songs of leave-taking. 
People cried and sang at the same time. Entire 
strangers, men and women, embraced and kissed each 
other; men embraced men and kissed each other. It 
was a real witches' sabbath of emotion ; like a wild tor- 
rent, that emotion carried away the whole assembled 
humanity. Nobody, not even the strongest and most 



MARCHING INTO BELGIUM 3 

determined spirit, could resist that ebullition of feeling. 

But all that was surpassed by the taking leave at the 
station, which we reached after a short march. Here 
final adieus had to be said, here the separation had to 
take place. I shall never forget that leave-taking, 
however old I may grow to be. Desperately many 
women clung to their men ; some had to be removed by 
force. Just as if they had suddenly had a vision of 
the fate of their beloved ones, as if they were beholding 
the silent graves in foreign lands in which those poor 
nameless ones were to be buried, they sought to cling 
fast to their possession, to retain what already no 
longer belonged to them. 

Finally that, too, was over. We had entered a train 
that had been kept ready, and had made ourselves com- 
fortable in our cattle-trucks. Darkness had come, and 
we had no light in our comfortable sixth-class carriages. 

The train moved slowly down the Rhine, it went along 
without any great shaking, and some of us were seized 
by a worn-out feeling after those days of great excite- 
ment. Most of the soldiers lay with their heads on 
their knapsacks and slept. Others again tried to pierce 
the darkness as if attempting to look into the future; 
still others drew stealthily a photo out of their breast- 
pocket, and only a very small number of us spent the 
time by debating our point of destination. Where are 
we going to? Well, where? Nobody knew it. At last, 
after long, infinitely long hours the train came to a 
stop. After a night of quiet, slow riding we were at 
— Aix-la-Chapelle ! At Aix-la-Chapelle ! What were 
we doing at Aix-la-Chapelle? We did not know, and 
the officers only shrugged their shoulders when we asked 
them. 

After a short interval the journey proceeded, and on 



4 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

the evening of the 2nd of August we reached a farm in 
the neighborhood of the German and Belgian frontier, 
near Herbesthal. Here our company was quartered in 
a barn. Nobody knew what our business was at the 
Belgian frontier. In the afternoon of the 3rd of Au- 
gust reservists arrived, and our company was brought 
to its war strength. We had still no idea concerning 
the purpose of our being sent to the Belgian frontier, 
and that evening we lay down on our bed of straw with 
a forced tranquillity of mind. Something was sure to 
happen soon, to deliver us from that oppressive uncer- 
tainty. How few of us thought that for many it would 
be the last night to spend on German soil ! 

A subdued signal of alarm fetched us out of our 
" beds " at 3 o'clock in the morning. The company 
assembled, and the captain explained to us the war 
situation. He informed us that we had to keep ready 
to march, that he himself was not yet informed about 
the direction. Scarcely half an hour later fifty large 
traction motors arrived and stopped in the road be- 
fore our quarters. But the drivers of these wagons, 
too, knew no particulars and had to wait for orders. 
The debate about our nearest goal was resumed. The 
orderlies, who had snapped up many remarks of the 
officers, ventured the opinion that we would march into 
Belgium the very same day ; others contradicted them. 
None of us could know anything for certain. But the 
order to march did not arrive, and in the evening all 
of us could lie down again on our straw. But it was 
a short rest. At 1 o'clock in the morning an alarm 
aroused us again, and the captain honored us with an 
address. He told us we were at war with Belgium, 
that we should acquit ourselves as brave soldiers, earn 
iron crosses, and do honor to our German name. Then 



MARCHING INTO BELGIUM 5 

he continued somewhat as follows : " We are making 
war only against the armed forces, that is the Belgium 
army. The lives and property of civilians are under 
the protection of international treaties, international 
law, but you soldiers must not forget that it is your 
duty to defend your lives as long as possible for the pro- 
tection of your Fatherland, and to sell them as dearly 
as possible. We want to prevent useless shedding of 
blood as far as the civilians are concerned, but I want 
to remind you that a too great considerateness borders 
on cowardice, and cowardice in face of the enemy is 
punished very severely." 

After that " humane " speech by our captain we 
were " laden " into the automobiles, and crossed the 
Belgian frontier on the morning of August 5th. In 
order to give special solemnity to that " historical " 
moment we had to give three cheers. 

At no other moments the fruits of military education 
have presented themselves more clearly before my mind. 
The soldier is told, " The Belgian is your enemy," and 
he has to believe it. The soldier, the workman in uni- 
form, had not known till then who was his enemy. If 
they had told us, " The Hollander is your enemy," we 
would have believed that, too ; we would have been com- 
pelled to believe it, and would have shot him by order. 
We, the " Geraian citizens in uniform," must not have 
an opinion of our own, must have no thoughts of our 
own, for they give us our enemy and our friend accord- 
ing to requirements, according to the requirements of 
their own interests. The Frenchman, the Belgian, the 
Italian, is your enemy. Never mind, shoot as we or- 
der, and do not bother your head about it. You have 
duties to perform, perform them, and for the rest — 
cut it out ! 



6 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

Those were the thoughts that tormented my brain 
when crossing the Belgian frontier. And to console 
myself, and so as to justify before my own conscience 
the murderous trade that had been thrust upon me, I 
tried to persuade myself that though I had no Father- 
land to defend, I had to defend a home and protect it 
from devastation. But it was a weak consolation, and 
did not even outlast the first few days. 

Traveling in the fairly quick motor-cars we reached, 
towards 8 o'clock in the morning, our preliminary des- 
tination, a small but pretty village. The inhabitants 
of the villages which we had passed stared at us in 
speechless astonishment, so that we all had the impres- 
sion that those peasants for the most part did not 
know why we had come to Belgium. They had been 
roused from their sleep and, half-dressed, they gazed 
from their windows after our automobiles. After we 
had stopped and alighted, the peasants of that village 
came up to us without any reluctance, offered us food, 
and brought us coffee, bread, meat, etc. As the field- 
kitchen had not arrived we were glad to receive those 
kindly gifts of the " enemy," the more so because those 
fine fellows absolutely refused any payment. They 
told us the Belgian soldiers had left, for where they did 
not know. 

After a short rest we continued our march and the 
motor-cars went back. We had scarcely marched for 
an hour when cavalry, dragoons and huzzars, overtook 
us and informed us that the Germans were marching 
forward in the whole neighborhood, and that cyclist 
companies were close on our heels. That was comfort- 
ing news, for we no longer felt lonely and isolated in 
this strange country. Soon after the troop of cyclists 
really came along. It passed us quickly and left us bjr 



MARCHING INTO BELGIUM 7 

ourselves again. Words of anger were to be heard 
now; all the others were able to ride, but we had to 
walk. What we always had considered as a matter of 
course was now suddenly felt by us to be a great in- 
justice. And though our scolding and anger did not 
help us in the least, it turned our thoughts from the 
heaviness of the "monkey" (knapsack) which rested 
like a leaden weight on our backs. 

The heat was oppressive, the perspiration issued 
from every pore; the new and hard leather straps, the 
new stiff uniforms rubbed against many parts of the 
body and made them sore, especially round the waist. 
With great joy we therefore hailed the order that came 
at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, to halt before an isolated 
farm and rest in the grass. 



II 

FIGHTING IN BELGIUM 

About ten minutes we might have lain in the grass 
when we suddenly heard rifle shots in front of us. 
Electrified, all of us jumped up and hastened to our 
rifles. Then the firing of rifles that was going on at 
a distance of about a mile or a mile and a half began 
steadily to increase in volume. We set in motion im- 
mediately. 

The expression and the behavior of the soldiers be- 
trayed that something was agitating their mind, that 
an emotion had taken possession of them which they 
could not master and had never experienced before. 
On myself I could observe a great restlessness. Fear 
and curiosity threw my thoughts into a wild jumble; 
my head was swimming, and everything seemed to press 
upon my heart. But I wished to conceal my fears from 
my comrades. I know I tried to with a will, but whether 
I succeeded better than my comrades, whose uneasiness 
I could read in their faces, I doubt very much. 

Though I was aware that we should be in the firing 
line within half an hour, I endeavored to convince my- 
self that our participation in the fight would no longer 
be necessary. I clung obstinately, nay, almost con- 
vulsively to every idea that could strengthen that hope 
or give me consolation. That not every bullet finds its 
billet ; that, as we had been told, most wounds in mod- 
ern wars were afflicted by grazing shots which caused 

8 



FIGHTING IN BELGIUM 9 

slight flesh-wounds; those were some of the reiterated 
self-deceptions indulged in against my better knowl- 
edge. And they proved effective. It was not only that 
they made me in fact feel more easy ; deeply engaged in 
those thoughts I had scarcely observed that we were 
already quite near the firing line. 

The bicycles at the side of the road revealed to us 
that the cyclist corps were engaged by the enemy. We 
did not know, of course, the strength of our opponents 
as we approached the firing line in leaps. In leaping 
forward every one bent down instinctively, whilst to our 
right and left and behind us the enemy's bullets could be 
heard striking; yet we reached the firing line without 
any casualties and were heartily welcomed by our hard- 
pressed friends. The cyclists, too, had not yet suf- 
fered any losses; some, it is true, had already been 
slightly wounded, but they could continue to participate 
in the fight. 

We were lying flat on the ground, and fired in the 
direction indicated to us as fast as our rifles would 
allow. So far we had not seen our opponents. That, 
it seemed, was too little interesting to some of our sol- 
diers ; so they rose partly, and fired in a kneeling po- 
sition. Two men of my company had to pay their 
curiosity with their lives. Almost at one and the same 
time they were shot through the head. The first victim 
of our group fell down forward without uttering a 
sound; the second threw up his arms and fell on his 
back. Both of them were dead instantly. 

Who could describe the feelings that overcome a man 
in the first real hail of bullets he is in? When we were 
leaping forward to reach the firing line I felt no longer 
any fear and seemed only to try to reach the line as 
quickly as possible. But when looking at the first dead 



10 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

man I was seized by a terrible horror. For minutes 
I was perfectly stupefied, had completely lost command 
over myself and was absolutely incapable to think or 
act. I pressed my face and hands firmly against the 
ground, and then suddenly I was seized by an irre- 
pressible excitement, took hold of my gun, and began 
to fire away blindly. Little after little I quieted down 
again somewhat, nay, I became almost quite confident 
as if everything was normal. Suddenly I found myself 
content with myself and my surroundings, and when a 
little later the whole line was commanded, " Leap for- 
ward ! March, march ! " I ran forward demented like 
the others, as if things could not be other than what 
they were. The order, " Position 1 " followed, and we 
flopped down like wet bags. Firing had begun again. 
Our firing became more lively from minute to min- 
ute, and grew into a rolling deafening noise. If in such 
an infernal noise you want to make yourself understood 
by your neighbor, you have to shout at him so that 
it hurts your throat. The effect of our firing caused 
our opponent to grow unsteady ; his fire became weaker ; 
the line of the enemy began to waver. Being separated 
from the enemy by only about 500 yards, we could ob- 
serve exactly what was happening there. We saw how 
about half of the men opposing us were drawn back. 
The movement is executed by taking back every sec- 
ond man whilst number one stays on until the retir- 
ing party has halted. We took advantage of that 
movement to inflict the severest losses possible on our 
retreating opponent. As far as we could survey the 
country to our right and left we observed that the 
Germans were pressing forward at several points. Our 
company, too, received the order to advance when the 
enemy took back all his forces. 



FIGHTING IN BELGIUM 11 

Our task was to cling obstinately to the heels of the 
retreating enemy so as to leave him no time to collect 
his forces and occupy new positions. We therefore 
followed him in leaps with short breathing pauses so 
as to prevent him in the first place from establishing 
himself in the village before him. We knew that other- 
wise we should have to engage in costly street fighting. 
But the Belgians did not attempt to establish them- 
selves, but disengaged themselves from us with astonish- 
ing skill. 

Meanwhile we had been reenforced. Our company 
had been somewhat dispersed, and everybody marched 
with the troop he chanced to find himself with. My 
troop had to stay in the village to search every house 
systematically for soldiers that had been dispersed 
or hidden. During that work we noticed that the Ger- 
mans were marching forward from all directions. 
Field artillery, machine-gun sections, etc., arrived, and 
all of us wondered whence all of this came so quickly. 

There was however no time for long reflections. 
With fixed bayonets we went from house to house, 
from door to door, and though the harvest was very 
meager, we were not turned away quite empty-handed, 
as the inhabitants had to deliver up all privately owned 
fire-arms, ammunition, etc. The chief functionary of 
the village who accompanied us, had to explain to every 
citizen that the finding of arms after the search would 
lead to punishment by court-martial. And court-mar- 
tial means — death. 

After another hour had passed we were alarmed 
again by rifle and gun firing; a new battle had begun. 
Whether the artillery was in action on both sides could 
not be determined from the village, but the noise was 
loud enough, for the air was almost trembling with the 



12 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

rumbling, rolling, and growling of the guns which 
steadily increased in strength. The ambulance col- 
umns were bringing in the first wounded ; orderly officers 
whizzed past us. War had begun with full intensity. 

Darkness w^as falling before we had finished search- 
ing all the houses. We dragged mattresses, sacks of 
straw, feather beds, whatever we could get hold of, to 
the public school and the church where the wounded 
were to be accommodated. They were put to bed as 
well as it could be done. Those first victims of the 
horrible massacre of nations were treated with touching 
care. Later on, when we had grown more accustomed 
to those horrible sights, less attention was paid to the 
wounded. 

The first fugitives now arrived from the neighboring 
villages. They had probably walked for many an hour, 
for they looked tired, absolutely exhausted. There 
were women, old, white-haired men, and children, all 
mixed together, who had not been able to save any- 
thing but their poor lives. In a perambulator or a 
push-cart those unfortunate beings carried away all 
that the brutal force of war had left them. In marked 
contrast to the fugitives that we had hitherto met, 
these people were filled with the utmost fear, shiver- 
ing with fright, terror-stricken in face of the hostile 
w^orld. As soon as they beheld one of us soldiers they 
were seized with such a fear that they seemed to crum- 
ple up. How different they w^re from the inhabitants 
of the village in which we were, who showed themselves 
kind, friendly, and even obliging towards us. We 
tried to find out the cause of that fear, and heard 
that those fugitives had witnessed bitter street fight- 
ing in their village. They had experienced war, had 
seen their houses burnt, their simple belongings perish, 



FIGHTING IN BELGIUM 13 

and had not yet been able to forget their streets filled 
with dead and wounded soldiers. It became clear to us 
that it was not fear alone that made these people look 
like the hunted quarry; it was hatred, hatred against 
us, the invaders who, as the}^ had to suppose, had fallen 
upon them unawares, had driven them from their 
home. But their hatred was not only directed against 
us, the German soldiers, nay, their own, the Belgian 
soldiers, too, were not spared by it. 

We marched away that very evening and tried to 
reach our section. When darkness fell the Belgians 
had concentrated still farther to the rear; they were 
already quite near the fortress of Liege. Many of the 
villages we passed were in flames ; the inhabitants who 
had been driven away passed us in crowds ; there were 
women whose husbands were perhaps also defending 
their " Fatherland," children, old men who were pushed 
hither and thither and seemed to be always in the 
way. Without any aim, any plan, any place in which 
they could rest, those processions of misery and un- 
happiness crept past us — the best illustration of man- 
murdering, nation-destroying war! Again we reached 
a village which to all appearances had once been in- 
habited by a well-to-do people, by a contented little 
humanity. There were nothing but ruins now, burnt, 
destroyed houses and farm buildings, dead soldiers, 
German and Belgian, and among them several civilians 
who had been shot by sentence of the court-martial. 

Towards midnight we reached the German line which 
was trying to get possession of a village which was 
already within the fortifications of Liege, and was ob- 
stinately defended by the Belgians. Here we had to 
employ all our forces to wrench from our opponent 
house after house, street after street. It was not yet 



14. A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

completely dark so that we had to go through that 
terrible struggle which developed with all our senses 
awake and receptive. It was a hand to hand fight; 
every kind of weapon had to be employed ; the opponent 
was attacked with the butt-end of the rifle, the knife, 
the fist, and the teeth. One of my best friends fought 
with a gigantic Belgian; both had lost their rifle. 
They were pummeling each other with their fists. I 
had just finished with a Belgian who was about twenty- 
two years of age, and was going to assist my friend, as 
the Herculean Belgian was so much stronger than he. 
Suddenly my friend succeeded with a lightning motion 
in biting the Belgian in the chin. He bit so deeply 
that he tore away a piece of flesh with his teeth. The 
pain the Belgian felt must have been immense, for he 
let go his hold and ran off screaming with terrible pain. 

All that happened in seconds. The blood of the 
Belgian ran out of my friend's mouth ; he was seized 
by a horrible nausea, an indescribable terror, the taste 
of the warm blood nearly drove him insane. That 
young, gay, lively fellow of twenty-four had been 
cheated out of his youth in that night. He used to be 
the j oiliest among us; after that we could never induce 
him even to smile. 

Whilst fighting during the night I came for the 
first time in touch with the butt-end of a Belgian rifle. 
I had a hand to hand fight with a Belgian when an- 
other one from behind hit me with his rifle on the head 
with such force that it drove my head into the helmet 
up to my ears. I experienced a terrific pain all over 
my head, doubled up, and lost consciousness. When I 
revived I found myself with a bandaged head in a barn 
among other wounded. 

I had not been severely wounded, but I felt as if ray 



FIGHTING IN BELGIUM 15 

head was double its normal size, and there was a noise 
in my ears as of the wheels of an express engine. 

The other wounded and the soldiers of the ambulance 
corps said that the Belgians had been pushed back to 
the fortress ; we heard, however, that severe fighting 
was still going on. Wounded soldiers were being 
brought in continuously, and they told us that the 
Germans had already taken in the first assault several 
fortifications like outer-forts, but that they had not 
been able to maintain themselves because they had not 
been sufficiently provided with artillery. The defended 
places and works inside the forts were still practically 
completely intact, and so were their garrisons. The 
forts were not yet ripe for assault, so that the Ger- 
mans had to retreat with downright enormous losses. 
The various reports were contradictory, and it was im- 
possible to get a clear idea of what was happening. 

Meanwhile the artillery had begun to bombard the 
fortress, and even the German soldiers were terror- 
stricken at that bombardment. The heaviest artillery 
was brought into action against the modern forts of 
concrete. Up to that time no soldier had been aware 
of the existence of the 42-centimeter mortars. Even 
when Liege had fallen into German hands we soldiers 
could not explain to ourselves how it was possible that 
those enormous fortifications, constructed partly of re- 
inforced concrete of a thickness of one to six meters, 
could be turned into a heap of rubbish after only a 
few hours' bombardment. Having been wounded, I 
could of course not take part in those operations, but 
my comrades told me later on how the various forts 
were taken. Guns of all sizes were turned on the forts, 
but it was the 21- and 42-centimeter mortars that really 
did the work. From afar one could hear already the 



16 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

approach of the 42-centimeter shell. The shell bored 
its way through the air with an uncanny, rushing 
and hissing sound that was like a long shrill whis- 
tling filling the whole atmosphere for seconds. Where 
it struck everything was destroyed within a radius of 
several hundred yards. Later I have often gazed in 
wonderment at those hecatombs which the 42-centime- 
ter mortar erected for itself on all its journeys. The 
enormous air pressure caused by the bursting of its 
shells made it even difficult for us Germans in the most 
advanced positions to breathe for several seconds. 
To complete the infernal row the Zeppelins appeared 
at night in order to take part in the work of destruc- 
tion. Suddenly the soldiers would hear above their 
heads the whirring of the propellers and the noise of 
the motors, well-known to most Germans. The Zep- 
pelins came nearer and nearer, but not until they were 
in the immediate neighborhood of the forts were they 
discovered by our opponents, who immediately brought 
all available searchlights into play in order to search 
the sky for the dreaded flying enemies. The whirring 
of the propellers of the airships which had been dis- 
tributed for work on the various forts suddenly ceased. 
Then, right up in the air, a blinding light appeared, 
the searchlight of the Zeppelin, which lit up the coun- 
try beneath it for a short time. Just as suddenly it 
became dark and quiet until a few minutes later, power- 
ful detonations brought the news that the Zeppelin had 
dropped its "ballast." That continued for quite a 
while, explosion followed explosion, interrupted only by 
small fiery clouds, shrapnel which the Belgian artillery 
sent up to the airships, exploding in the air. Then 
the whirring of the propellers began again, first loud 
and coming from near, from right above our heads. 



FIGHTING IN BELGIUM 17 

then softer and softer until the immense ship of the air 
had entirely disappeared from our view and hearing. 

Thus the forts were made level with the ground ; thou- 
sands of Belgians were lying dead and buried behind 
and beneath the ramparts and fortifications. General 
assault followed. Liege was in the hands of the Ger- 
mans. 

I was with the ambulance column until the 9th of 
August and by that time had been restored sufficiently 
to rejoin my section of the army. After searching for 
hours I found my company camping in a field. I missed 
many a good friend ; my section had lost sixty-five men, 
dead and wounded, though it had not taken part in the 
pursuit of the enemy. 

We had been attached to the newly-formed 18th 
Reserve Army Corps (Hessians) and belonged to 
the Fourth Army which was under the command of 
Duke Albrecht of Wurttemberg. Where that army, 
which had not yet been formed, was to operate was 
quite unknown to us private soldiers. We had but 
to follow to the place where the herd was to be 
slaughtered; what did it matter where that would be.'' 
On the 11th of August we began to march and covered 
25-45 miles every day. We learned later on that we 
always kept close to the Luxemburg frontier so as to 
cross it immediately should necessity arise. Had it not 
been so oppressively hot we should have been quite con- 
tent, for we enjoyed several days of rest which braced 
us up again. 

On the 21st of August we came in contact with the 
first German troops belonging to the Fourth Army, 
about 15 miles to the east of the Belgian town of Neuf- 
chateau. The battle of Neufchateau, which lasted 
from the 22nd to the 24th of August, had already be- 



18 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

gun. A French army here met with the Fourth Ger- 
man Army, and a murderous slaughter began. As is 
always the case it commenced with small skirmishes of 
advance guards and patrols; little after little ever- 
growing masses of soldiers took part and when, in the 
evening of the 22nd of August, we were led into the 
firing lino, the battle had already developed to one of 
the most murderous of the world war. When we ar- 
rived the French were still in possession of nearly 
three-quarters of the town. The artillery had set fire 
to the greatest part of Neufchateau, and only the splen- 
did villas in the western part of the town escaped de- 
struction for the time being. The street fighting lasted 
the whole night. It was only towards noon of the 23rd 
of August, when the town was in the hands of the Ger- 
mans, that one could see the enormous losses that both 
sides had suffered. The dwelling-places, the cellars, 
the roads and side-walks were thickly covered with dead 
and horribly wounded soldiers; the houses were ruins, 
gutted, empty shells in which scarcely anything of real 
value had remained whole. Thousands had been made 
beggars in a night full of horrors. Women and chil- 
dren, soldiers and citizens were lying just where death 
had struck them down, mixed together just as the merci- 
less shrapnel and shells had sent them out of life into 
the darkness beyond. There had been real impartial- 
ity. There lay a German soldier next to a white- 
haired French woman, a little Belgian stripling whom 
fear had driven out of the house into the street, lay 
huddled up against the " enemy," a German soldier, 
who might have been protection and safety for him. 

Had we not been shooting and stabbing, murdering 
and clubbing as much and as vigorously as we could the 
whole night? And yet there was scarcely one amongst 



FIGHTING IN BELGIUM 1^ 

US who did not shed tears of grief and emotion at the 
spectacles presenting themselves. There was for in- 
stance a man whose age it was difficult to discover; he 
was lying dead before a burning house. Both his legs 
had been burnt up to the knees by the fire falling down 
upon him. The wife and daughter of the dead man 
were clinging to him, and were sobbing so piteously 
that one simply could not bear it. Many, many of the 
dead had been burnt entirely or partly ; the cattle were 
burning in their stables, and the wild bellowing of 
those animals fighting against death by fire, inter- 
mingled with the crying, the moaning, the groaning 
and the shrieking of the wounded. But who had the 
time now to bother about that? Everybody wanted 
help, everybody wanted to help himself, everybody was 
only thinking of himself and his little bit of life. " He 
who falls remains where he lies ; only he who stands 
can win victories." That one learns from militarism 
and the average soldier acts upon that principle. And 
yet most soldiers are forced by circumstances to play 
the role of the good Samaritan. People who could 
formerly not look upon blood or a dead person, were 
now bandaging their comrades' arms and legs which had 
been amputated by shells. They did not do it because 
they were impelled by the command of their heart, but 
because they said to themselves that perhaps to-mor- 
row already their turn might come and that they, too, 
might want assistance. It is a healthy egotism which 
makes men of mercy out of those hardened people. 

The French had formed their lines again outside the 
town in the open. At the moment when the enemy 
evacuated the town an error was made by the Germans 
which cost many hundreds of German soldiers their 
lives. The Germans had occupied the rest of the town 



20 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

with such celerity that our artillery which was pound- 
ing that quarter had not been informed of the changed 
situation, and was raining shell upon shell into our 
own ranks. That failure of our intelligence depart- 
ment caused the death of man}^ of our comrades. Com- 
pelled by the firing of the enemy and our own artillery 
we had finally to give up part of our gains, which later 
on we recovered, again with great sacrifice. Curiously 
enough, the residential quarter with the villas I men- 
tioned before had not suffered seriously ; the Red Cross 
flag was hoisted on the houses in which temporary hos- 
pitals were established. 

It is here that the Belgian citizens are said to have 
mutilated some German wounded soldiers. Whether it 
was true, whether it was only rumored, as was asserted 
also many times by German soldiers who had been in 
the hospitals, I do not know. But this I know, that 
on the 24th of August when the French had executed 
a general retreat, it was made known in an army order 
that German soldiers had been murdered there and that 
the German army could not leave the scenes of those 
shameful deeds without having first avenged their poor 
comrades. The order was therefore given — by the 
leader of the army — to raze the town without mercy. 
When later on (it was in the evening and we were pur- 
suing the enemy) we were resting for a short time, 
clouds of smoke in the east showed that the judgment 
had been fulfilled. A battery of artillery that had re- 
mained behind had razed house after house. Revenge 
is sweet, also for Christian army leaders. 

Outside the town the French had reformed their 
ranks, and were offering the utmost resistance. But 
they were no match for the Gorman troops who con- 
sisted largely of young and active men. Frenchmen 



FIGHTING IN BELGIUM 21 

taken prisoner explained that it was simply impossible 
to withstand an assault of this war-machine, when the 
German columns attacked with the bayonet and the cry 
of " Hurrah ! hurrah ! " which penetrated to the very 
marrow. I can understand that, for we sometimes ap- 
peared to ourselves to be a good imitation of American 
Indians who, like us, rushed upon their enemies with 
shrill shouts. After a fight lasting three hours many 
Frenchmen surrendered, asking for quarter with raised 
hands. Whole battalions of the enemy were thus cap- 
tured by us. Finally, in the night from the 23rd to 
the 24th of August, the ranks of the enemy were thrown 
into confusion and retreated, first slowly, then flying 
headlong. Our opponent left whole batteries, munition 
columns, ambulance columns, etc. 

I found myself in the first pursuing section. The 
roads we used were again literally covered with corpses ; 
knapsacks, rifles, dead horses and men were lying there 
in a wild jumble. The dead had been partly crushed 
and pounded to a pulp by the horses and vehicles, an ^^, 
indescribably terrible spectacle even for the most 
hardened mass-murderer. Dead and wounded were ly- 
ing to the right and left of the road, in fields, in ditches ; 
the red trousers of the French stood out distinctly 
against the ground ; the field-gray trousers of the Ger- 
mans were however scarcely to be noticed and difficult 
to discover. 

The distance between ourselves and the fleeing 
Frenchmen became greater and greater, and the spirit 
of our soldiers, in spite of the hardships they had un- 
dergone, became better and gayer. They joked and 
sang, forgot the corpses which were still filling the 
roads and paths, and felt quite at ease. They had al- 
ready accustomed themselves to the horrible to such 



22 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

a degree that they stepped over the corpses with un- 
concern, without even making the smallest detour. 
The experience of those first few weeks of the war had 
already brutalized us completely. What was to hap- 
pen to us if this should continue for months — ? 



Ill 

SHOOTING CIVIIJLA.NS IN BELGIUM 

At 11 o'clock all further philosophizing was put a 
stop to ; we were ordered to halt, and we were to receive 
our food from the field kitchen. 

We were quite hungry and ate the tinned soup with 
the heartiest of appetites. Many of our soldiers were 
sitting with their dinner-pails on the dead horses that 
were lying about, and were eating with such pleasure 
and heartiness as if they were home at mother's. Nor 
did some corpses in the neighborhood of our improvised 
camp disturb us. There was only a lack of water and 
after having eaten thirst began to torment us. 

Soon afterwards we continued our march in the 
scorching midday sun; dust was covering our uni- 
forms and skin to the depth of almost an inch. We 
tried in vain to be jolly, but thirst tormented us more 
and more, and we became weaker and weaker from one 
quarter of an hour to another. Many in our ranks 
fell down exhausted, and we were simply unable to 
move. So the commander of our section had no other 
choice but to let us halt again if he did not want every 
one of us to drop out. Thus it happened that we 
stayed behind a considerable distance, and were not 
amongst the first that were pursuing the French. 

Finally, towards four o'clock, we saw a village in 
front of us; we began at once to march at a much 
brisker pace. Among other things we saw a farm- 

23 



24. A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

cart on which were several civilian prisoners, appar- 
ently snipers. There was also a Catholic priest among 
them who had, like the others, his hands tied behind 
his back with a rope. Curiosity prompted us to en- 
quire what he had been up to, and we heard that he 
had incited the farmers of the village to poison the 
water. 

We soon reached the village and the first well at 
which we hoped to quench our thirst thoroughly. But 
that was no easy matter, for a military guard had 
been placed before it who scared us off with the warn- 
ing, " Poisoned " ! Disappointed and terribly embit- 
tered the soldiers, half dead with thirst, gnashed 
their teeth; they hurried to the next well, but every- 
where the same devilish thing occurred — the guard 
preventing them from drinking. In a square, in the 
middle of the village, there was a large village well 
which sent, through two tubes, water as clear as crys- 
tal into a large trough. Five soldiers were guarding 
it and had to watch that nobody drank of the poi- 
soned water. I was just going to march past it with 
my pal when suddenly the second, larger portion of 
our company rushed like madmen to the well. The 
guards were carried away by the rush, and every one 
now began to drink the water with the avidity of an 
animal. All quenched their thirst, and not one of us 
became ill or died. We heard later on that the priest 
had to pay for it with his death, as the military au- 
thorities " knew " that the water in all the wells of 
that village was poisoned and that the soldiers had 
only been saved by a lucky accident. Faithfully the 
God of the Germans had watched over us ; the captured 
Belgians did not seem to be under his protection. 
They had to die. 



SHOOTING CIVILIANS IN BELGIUM 25 

In most places we passed at that time we were 
warned against drinking the water. The natural con- 
sequence was that the soldiers began to hate the popu- 
lation which they now had to consider to be their bit- 
terest enemies. That again aroused the worst in- 
stincts in some soldiers. In every army one finds men 
with the disposition of barbarians. The many mil- 
lions of inhabitants in Germany or France are not all 
civilized people, much as we like to convince ourselves 
of the contrary. Compulsory military service in those 
countries forces all without distinction into the army, 
men and monsters. I have often bitterly resented the 
wrong one did to our army in calling us all barbarians, 
only because among us — as, naturally also among the 
French and English — there were to be found elements 
that really ought to be in the penitentiary. I will only 
cite one example of how we soldiers ourselves punished 
a wretch whom we caught committing a crime. 

One evening — it was dark already — we reached a 
small village to the east of the town of Bertrix, and 
there, too, found " poisoned " water. We halted in 
the middle of the village. I was standing before a 
house with a low window, through which one could see 
the interior. In the miserable poverty-stricken work- 
ing man's dwelling we observed a woman who clung to 
her children as if afraid they would be torn from her. 
Though we felt very bitter on account of the want 
of water, every one of us would have liked to help the 
poor woman. Some of us were just going to sacri- 
fice our little store of victuals and to say a few com- 
forting words to the woman, when all at once a stone 
as big as a fist was thrown through the window-pane 
into the room and hurt a little girl in the right hand. 
There were sincere cries of indignation, but at the same 



26 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

moment twenty hands at least laid hold of the wretch, 
a reservist of our company, and gave him such a hid- 
ing as to make him almost unconscious. If officers 
and other men had not interfered the fellow would have 
been lynched there and then. He was to be placed be- 
fore a court-martial later on, but it never came to that. 
He was drowned in the river at the battle of the Meuse. 
Many soldiers believed he drowned himself, because he 
was not only shunned by his fellow soldiers, but was also 
openly despised by them. 

We were quartered on that village and had to live 
in a barn. I went with some pals into the village to 
buy something to eat. At a farmer's house we got 
ham, bread, and wine, but not for money. The people 
positively refused to take our money as they regarded 
us as their guests, so they said; only we were not to 
harm them. Nevertheless we left them an adequate 
payment in German money. Later on we found the 
same situation in many other places. Everywhere peo- 
ple were terribly frightened of us ; they began to trem- 
ble almost when a German soldier entered their house. 

Four of us had formed a close alliance ; we had prom- 
ised each other to stick together and assist each other 
in every danger. We often also visited the citizens in 
their houses, and tried to the best of our ability to com- 
fort the sorely tried people and talk them out of their 
fear of us. Without exception we found them to be 
lovable, kindly, and good people who soon became con- 
fidential and free of speech when they noticed that we 
were really their friends. But when, at leaving, we 
wrote with chalk on the door of their houses " Bitte 
schonen, hier wohnen brave, gute, Leute ! " (Please 
spare, here live good and decent people) their joy and 
thankfulness knew no bounds. If so much bad blood 



SHOOTING CIVILIANS IN BELGIUM 27; 

was created, if so many incidents happened that led to 
the shooting by court-martial of innumerable Belgians, 
the difference of language and the mistakes arising 
therefrom were surely not the least important causes; 
of that I and many others of my comrades became con- 
vinced during that time in Belgium. But the at first 
systematically nourished suspicion against the " enemy," 
too, was partly responsible for it. 

In the night we continued our march, after having 
been attached to the 21-centimeter mortar battery of 
the 9th Regiment of Foot Artillery which had just ar- 
rived ; we were not only to serve as covering troops for 
that battery, but were also to help it place those giants 
in position when called upon. The gun is transported 
apart from the carriage on a special wagon. Gun-car- 
riage and guns are drawn each by six horses. Those 
horses, which are only used by the foot artillery, are the 
best and strongest of the German army. And yet even 
those animals are often unable to do the work required 
of them, so that all available men, seventy or eighty at 
times, have to help transport the gun with ropes spe- 
cially carried for that purpose. That help is chiefly 
resorted to when the guns leave the road to be placed in 
firing position. In order to prevent the wheels from 
sinking into the soil, other wheels, half a yard wide, 
are attached round them. 

These guns are high-angle guns, i. e., their shot rises 
into the air for several thousand yards, all according 
to the distance of the spot to be hit, and then drops at 
a great angle. That is the reason why neither hill nor 
mountain can protect an enemy battery placed behind 
those elevations. At first the French had almost no 
transportable heavy artillery so that it was quite im- 
possible for them to fight successfully against our guns 



28 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

of large caliber. Under those conditions the German 
gunners, of course, felt themselves to be top-dog, and 
decorated their 21-centimeter guns with inscriptions 
like the following, " Here declarations of war are still 
being accepted." 

We felt quite at ease with the artillery, and were still 
passably fresh when we halted at six o'clock in the morn- 
ing, though we had been marching since two o'clock. 
Near our halting place we found a broken German 
howitzer, and next to it two dead soldiers. When firing, 
a shell had burst in the gun destroying it entirely. 
Two men of the crew had been killed instantly and some 
had been seriously wounded by the flying pieces. We 
utilized the pause to bury the two dead men, put both of 
them in one grave, placed both their helmets on the 
grave, and wrote on a board : " Here rest two German 
Artillerymen." 

We had to proceed, and soon reached the town of 
Bertrix. Some few houses to the left and right of the 
road were burning fiercely; we soon got to know that 
they had been set alight because soldiers marching past 
were said to have been shot at from those houses. Be- 
fore one of these houses a man and his wife and their 
son, a boy of 15 or 16, lay half burnt to cinders; all 
had been covered with straw. Three more civilians lay 
dead in the same street. 

We had marched past some more houses when all at 
once shots rang out ; they had been shooting from some 
house, and four of our soldiers had been wounded. For 
a short while there was confusion. The house from 
which the shots must have come was soon surrounded, 
and hand grenades were thrown through all the windows 
into the interior. In an instant all the rooms were in 
flames. The exploding hand grenades caused such an 



SHOOTING CIVILIANS IN BELGIUM 29 

enormous air pressure that all the doors were blown 
from their hinges and the inner walls torn to shreds. 
Almost at the same time, five men in civilian clothes 
rushed into the street and asked for quarter with up- 
lifted hands. They were seized immediately and taken 
to the officers, who formed themselves into a tribunal 
within a few minutes. Ten minutes later sentence had 
already been executed; five strong men lay on the 
ground, blindfolded and their bodies riddled by bullets. 
Six of us had in each of the five cases to execute the 
sentence, and unfortunately I, too, belonged to those 
thirty men. The condemned man whom my party of 
six had to shoot was a tall, lean man, about forty years 
of age. He did not wince for a moment when they 
blindfolded him. In a garden of a house nearby he was 
placed with his back against the house, and after our 
captain had told us that it was our duty to aim well 
so as to end the tragedy quickly, we took up our po- 
sition six paces from the condemned one. The sergeant 
commanding us had told us before to shoot the con- 
demned man through the chest. We then formed two 
lines, one behind the other. The command was given 
to load and secure, and we pushed five cartridges into 
the rifle. Then the command rang out, " Get ready ! " 
The first line knelt, the second stood up. We held our 
rifles in such a position that the barrel pointed in front 
of us whilst the butt-end rested somewhere near the hip. 
At the command, " Aim ! " we slowly brought our rifles 
into shooting position, grasped them firmly, pressed the 
plate of the butt-end against the shoulder and, with our 
cheek on the butt-end, we clung convulsively to the 
neck of the rifle. Our right forefinger was on the trig- 
ger, the sergeant gave us about half a minute for aim- 
ing before commanding, " Fire ! " 



so A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

Even to-day I cannot say whether our victim fell dead 
on the spot or how many of the six bullets hit him. I 
ran about all day long like a drunken man, and re- 
proached myself most bitterly with having played the 
executioner. For a long time I avoided speaking about 
it with fellow-soldiers, for I felt guilty. And yet — 
what else could we soldiers do but obey the order? 

Already in the preceding night there had been en- 
counters at Bertrix between the German military and 
the population. Houses were burning in every part of 
the town. In the market place there was a great heap 
of guns and revolvers of all makes. At the clergy- 
man's house they had found a French machine-gun and 
ammunition, whereupon the clergyman and his female 
cook had been arrested and, I suppose, placed immedi- 
ately before a court-martial. 

Under those conditions we were very glad to get out 
of Bertrix again. We marched on in the afternoon. 
After a march of some 3 miles we halted, and received 
food from the field kitchen. But this time we felt no 
appetite. The recollection of the incidents of the morn- 
ing made all of us feel so depressed that the meal turned 
out a real funeral repast. Silently we set in motion 
again, and camped in the open in the evening, as we 
were too tired to erect tents. 

It was there that all discipline went to pieces for the 
first time. The officers' orders to put up tents were 
not heeded in the slightest degree. The men were dog- 
tired, and suffered the officers to command and chatter 
as much as they liked. Every one wrapped himself up 
in his cloak, lay down where he was, and as soon as one 
had laid down one was asleep. The officers ran about 
like mad shouting with redoubled energy their com- 
mands at the exhausted soldiers ; in vain. The officers, 



SH(X)TING CIVILIANS IN BELGIUM 31 

of course had gone through the whole performance on 
horseback and, apparently, did not feel sufficiently tired 
to go to sleep. When their calling and shouting had no 
effect they had to recourse to personal physical exertion 
and began to shake us up. But as soon as one of us 
was awake the one before had gone to sleep again. 
Thus for a while we heard the exhortation, " I say, 
you ! Get up ! Fall in line for putting up tents ! " 
Wliereupon one turned contentedly on the other side 
and snoozed on. They tried to shake me awake, too, 
but after having sent some vigorous curses after the 
lieutenant — there was no lack of cursing on either side 
that evening — I continued to sleep the sleep of the 
just. 

For the first time blind discipline had failed. The 
human body was so exhausted that it was simply unable 
to play any longer the role of the obedient dog. 



IV 

GERMAN SOLDIERS AND BELGIAN CIVILIANS 

The march had made us very warm, and the night 
was cold. We shivered all over, and one after the 
other had to rise in order to warm himself by moving 
about. There was no straw to be had, and our thin 
cloaks offered but little protection. The officers slept 
in sleeping bags and woolen blankets. 

Gradually all had got up, for the dew had wetted 
our clothing; things were very uncomfortable. The 
men stood about in groups and criticized the incidents 
of the preceding day. The great majority were of the 
opinion that we should tell the officers distinctly that 
in future it would not be so easy for them to work their 
deeds of oppression. One of the older reservists pro- 
posed that we should simply refuse in future to exe- 
cute a command to shoot a condemned man ; he thought 
that if all of us clung together nothing could happen 
to us. However, we begged him to be careful, for if 
such expressions were reported they would shoot him 
for sedition without much ado. Nevertheless all of us 
were probably agreed that the reservist had spoken 
exactly what was in our minds. The bitter feeling was 
general, but we would not and could not commit any 
imprudent action. We had learned enough in those few 
days of the war to know that war brutalizes and that 
brutal force can no longer distinguish right from wrong ; 

and with that force we had to reckon, 

32 



GERMAN SOLDIERS AND BELGIAN CIVILIANS S3 

Meanwhile the time had come to march on. Before 
that we had to drink our coffee and arrange our bag- 
gage. When we were ready to march the captain gave 
us a speech in which he referred to the insubordination 
of the night before. " I take it," he said, " that it was 
the result of your stupidity. For if I were not con- 
vinced of that I should send you all before a court- 
martial, and all of you would be made unhappy for the 
rest of your lives. But in future," he continued after 
a short reflection, " I will draw the reins so tightly that 
incidents like these can never happen again, and the 
devil must be in it if I can not master you. An order 
is an order, even if one imagines himself too tired." 

We joined the mortar battery again, and continued 
our march. The country we were passing was rather 
dreary and monotonous so that that part of our march 
offered few interesting changes. The few tiny villages 
we came through were all abandoned by their inhabi- 
tants, and the poverty-stricken dwellings were mostly 
devastated. However, we met long lines of refugees. 
These people had as a rule fled with the French army, 
and were returning now, only to find their homes de- 
stroyed by the brutal hand of war. After a lengthy 
march broken by rests and bivouacs we neared the fairly 
large village of Sugny on the Belgo-French frontier 
just inside Belgian territory. 

It was about noon, and though the steadily increas- 
ing thunder of guns pointed to the development of an- 
other battle, we hoped to be able to stay at the place 
during the night. We entered it towards one o'clock, 
and were again quartered in a large barn. Most of 
the soldiers refused the food from the field-kitchen, and 
" requisitioned " eggs, chicken, geese, and even small 
pigs, and soon general cooking was in full swing. 



S4> A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

Everywhere the pots were steaming. Unfortunately 
most had taken the animals and foodstuffs from the 
inhabitants without paying for them. 

Several soldiers arrived with barrels and bottles of 
wine, which were at once beheaded and emptied in spite 
of the w^arnings and admonitions of the wiser amongst 
us. It naturally followed that several sergeants and 
men were soon almost helplessly drunk. The proprietor 
of " our " barn had three medium-sized pigs left. One 
of those intoxicated sergeants attempted to kill one of 
the pigs with a blunt pocket-knife. He had tormented 
the poor beast almost to death when some sober soldiers 
caught him in the act. The animal was killed by a shot 
through the head, and the sergeant had to go to sleep 
at once. But that was only one incident of many, and 
not at all the worst one. The inhabitants of Sugny 
had to suffer much from the drunkenness of our men. 
The open and secret plundering of gardens, stables 
and houses was quite a common thing, and as the sol- 
diers were practically left to do what they pleased, no 
matter what happened or how many complaints were 
made, matters could naturally not improve. 

The people of Sugny were to be pitied. First they 
had been plundered by the flying French soldiers, the 
allies of the Belgians, who had taken along with them 
everything they could get together in a hurry, and now 
the Germans were acting in no better way. 

In a family of seven we were told that the French 
had taken away all the bread and meat. They had 
gone through all the cupboards and shelves, and had 
even stolen the gold watches belonging to the daughters 
of the house. These and similar tales we heard from 
several families of the place, and what at first we did 
not think possible on our side we now beheld with our 



GERMAN SOLDIERS AND BELGIAN CIVILIANS 35 

own eyes — even our well-trained soldiers robbed, pil- 
laged, and stole. War makes no difference between 
friend and foe. 

The roaring of the guns, which could be heard very 
distinctly, kept the inhabitants in constant fear and 
excitement, so that we were finally quite able to under- 
stand why those people prayed to God to be so kind as 
to give victory to the Germans. An old inn-keeper ex- 
plained to me in fairly fluent German : " You see it is 
not that we are for Germany. Heaven forbid! We 
arc just Belgians and are so accustomed to it that we 
would rather remain Belgians to the end of our lives. 
But if the Germans had to retreat now, the French 
would come again and our village would again become 
the scene of battle. The little left to us would then be 
a prey to the flames. Therefore the Germans must 
win." And then he began praying again. 

That part of the country had twice harbored the 
French, and now we Germans were there. That the 
population suffered from want and hunger was not to 
be wondered at, and often we divided our rations with 
the severely tried people. Myself and two mates had 
given our " iron ration " (preserved meat and vege- 
tables and a bag of biscuits) to a woman " blessed " 
with eight children. At the call we could not show our 
" iron one," so we each of us had to mount guard twice 
as a punishment for that feeble proof of our charity. 
Our half-file leader. Lieutenant Spahn, expressed the 
opinion that pity was idiocy, and if the woman had 
eight children it was her own concern. Then he con- 
cluded literally with great emphasis, " In war everybody 
is his own nearest neighbor, even if all around us die in a 
ditch." 

Another soldier got fourteen days' close confinement. 



36 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

He was on his way with bread for a hungry poor fam- 
ily, and had in his arms six of those little army loaves 
which he had begged from the soldiers. He was met 
by that same Lieutenant Spahn who was in company 
of some sergeants. When Spahn asked him where he 
was taking the bread the sapper replied that he was on 
his way to a poor family that was really starving. The 
lieutenant then ordered him to take the bread immedi- 
ately to the company. Thereupon he overwhelmed the 
soldier with all the " military " expressions he could 
think of, like, " Are you mad? " " Donkey ! " " Silly 
ass ? " " Duffer ! " " Idiot ! " etc. When the soldier 
showed nevertheless no sign of confusion, but started to 
proceed on his way, the lieutenant roared out the order 
again, whereupon the soldier turned round, threw the 
bread before the feet of Lieutenant Spahn, and said 
quietly : " The duffers and idiots have to shed their 
blood to preserve also your junker family from the 
misery that has been brought upon this poor popula- 
tion." 

That the sapper got only two weeks of close confine- 
ment for " unmannerly conduct towards a superior " 
with aggravating circumstances, was a wonder ; he had 
indeed got off cheaply. 

According to martial law he had to work off his pun- 
ishment in the following manner: When his company 
went to rest in the evening, or after a fight or a march, 
the man had to report himself every day for two weeks 
at the local or camp guard. While the company was 
resting and the men could move about freely, he had to 
be in the guard room which he could only leave to do his 
needs, and then only by permission of the sergeant on 
guard, and in company of a soldier belonging to the 
guard. He was not allowed to smoke or read or con- 



GERMAN SOLDIERS AND BELGIAN CIVILIANS S7 

verse or speak, received his rations from the guard, and 
had to stay in the guard-room until his company 
marched off. Besides that he was tied to a tree or 
some other object for fully two hours every day. He 
was fettered with ropes and had to spend those two 
hours standing, even if he had marched 30 miles or had 
risked his life in a fight for the same " Fatherland " that 
bound him in fetters. 

The resentment continued to grow and, in consequence 
of the many severe punishments that were inflicted, had 
reached such a height that most soldiers refused to fet- 
ter their comrades. I, too, refused, and when I con- 
tinued my refusals in spite of repeated orders I was 
likewise condemned to two weeks of close confinement 
as an " entirely impenitent sinner," for " not obeying 
an order given " and for " persistent disobedience." 



THE HORRORS OF STREET FIGHTING 

We left Sugny the next morning, and an hour later 
we crossed the Belgo-French frontier. Here, too, we 
had to give three cheers. The frontier there runs 
through a wood, and on the other side of the wood we 
placed the 21-cm. mortars in position. 

Our troops were engaged with the rear-guard of the 
enemy near the French village of Vivier-au-Court. We 
were brought in to reinforce them, and after a five 
hours' fight the last opponents had retired as far as the 
Meuse. Vivier-au-Court had hardly suffered at all 
when we occupied it towards noon. Our company 
halted again here to wait for the mortar battery. 

Meanwhile we walked through the village to find some 
eatables. After visiting several houses we came upon 
the family of a teacher. Father and son were both 
soldiers ; two daughters of about twenty and twenty-two 
were alone with their mother. The mother was ex- 
tremely shy, and all the three women were crying when 
we entered the home. The eldest daughter received us 
with great friendliness and, to our surprise, in faultless 
German. We endeavored to pacify the women, begging 
them not to cry ; we assured them again and again that 
we would not harm them, and told them all kinds of 
merry stories to turn their thoughts to other things. 

One of my mates related that in a fight in the morn- 
ing, we had lost seven men and that several on our side 

had been wounded. That only increased the women's 

3S 



THE HORRORS OF STREET FIGHTING 39 

excitement, a thing we really could not understand. At 
last one of the girls, who had been the first one to com- 
pose herself, explained to us why they were so much 
excited. The girl had been at a boarding school at 
Charlottenburg (Germany) for more than two years, 
and her brother, who worked in Berlin as a civil engi- 
neer, had taken a holiday for three months after her 
graduation in order to accompany his sister home. 
Both had liked living in Germany, it was only the sud- 
den outbreak of war that had prevented the young 
engineer from returning to Berlin. He had to enter the 
French army, and belonged to the same company in 
which his father was an officer of the reserve. 

After a short interval the girl continued : " My 
father and brother were here only this morning. 
They have fought against you. It may have been one 
of their bullets which struck your comrades down. O, 
how terrible it is ! Now they are away — they who 
had only feelings of respect and friendship for the 
Germans — and as long as the Germans are between 
them and us we shall not be able to know whether they 
are dead or alive. Who is it that has this terrible war, 
this barbaric crime on his conscience? " Tears were 
choking her speech, and our own eyes did not remain 
dry. All desire to eat had gone ; after a silent pressing 
of hands we slunk away. 

We remained in the village till the evening, meanwhile 
moving about freely. In the afternoon nine men of my 
company were arrested; it was alleged against them 
that they had laid hands on a woman. They were dis- 
armed and kept at the local guard-house ; the same thing 
happened to some men of the infantry. Seven men of 
my company returned in the evening; what became of 
the other two I have not been able to find out. 



40 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

At that time a great tobacco famine reigned amongst 
us soldiers. I know that one mark and more was paid 
for a single cigarette, if any could be got at all. At 
Vivier-au-Court there was only one tobacco store run 
by a man employed by the state. I have seen that man 
being forced by sergeants at the point of the pistol to 
deliver his whole store of tobacco for a worthless order 
of requisition. The " gentlemen " later on sold that 
tobacco for half a mark a packet. 

Towards the evening we marched off, and got the 
mortar battery in a new position from where the ene- 
my's positions on the Meuse were bombarded. 

After a short march we engaged the French to the 
northeast of Donchery. On this side of the Meuse the 
enemy had only his rear-guard, whose task was to cover 
the crossing of the main French armies, a movement 
which was almost exclusively effected at Sedan and Don- 
chery. We stuck close to the heels of our opponents, 
who did not retreat completely till darkness began to 
fall. The few bridges left did not allow him to with- 
draw his forces altogether as quickly as his interest 
demanded. Thus it came about that an uncommonly 
murderous nocturnal street fight took place in Don- 
chery which was burning at every corner. The French 
fought with immense energy ; an awful slaughter was the 
result. Man against man ! That " man against 
man ! " is the most terrible thing I have experienced in 
war. Nobody can tell afterwards how many he has 
killed. You have gripped ^^our opponent, who is some- 
times weaker, sometimes stronger than yourself. In the 
light of the burning houses you observe that the white 
of his eyes has turned red ; his mouth is covered with a 
thick froth. With head uncovered, with disheveled 
hair, the uniform unbuttoned and mostly ragged, you 



THE HORRORS OF STREET FIGHTING 41 

stab, hew, scratch, bite and strike about you like a wild 
animal. It means life or death. You fight for your 
life. No quarter is given. You only hear the gasping, 
groaning, jerky breathing. You only think of your 
own life, of death, of home. In feverish haste, as m a 
whirlwind, old memories are rushing through your mmd. 
Yet you get more excited from minute to minute, for ex- 
haustion tries to master you ; but that must not be — 
not now! And again the fight is renewed; again there 
is hewing, stabbing, biting. Without rifle, without any 
weapon in a life and death struggle. You or I. I? 

IP Never! you! The exertion becomes superhuman. 

Now a thrust, a vicious bite, and you are the victor. 
Victor for the moment, for already the next man, who 
has just finished off one of your mates, is upon you — . 
You suddenly remember that you have a dagger about 
you. After a hasty fumbling you find it in the pre- 
scribed place. A swift movement and the dagger buries 
itself deeply in the body of the other man. 

Onward! onward! new enemies are coming up, real 
enemies. How clearly the thought suddenly flashes on 
you that that man is your enemy, that he is seekmg to 
take your life, that he bites, strikes, and scratches, tries 
to force you down and plant his dagger in your heart. 
Again you use your dagger. Thank heavens! He is 
down. Saved!- Still, you must have that dagger 
back' You pull it out of his chest. A jet of warm 
blood rushes out of the gaping wound and strikes your 
face. Human blood, warm human blood! You shake 
yourself, horror strikes you for only a few seconds 
The next one approaches ; again you have to defend 
your skin. Again and again the mad murdermg is 
repeated, all night long — 

Finally, towards four o'clock in the morning, the rest 



42 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

of the French surrendered after some companies of In- 
fantry had occupied two roads leading to the bridges. 
When the French on the other side became aware of this 
they blew up the bridges without considering their own 
troops who were still on them. Germans and French- 
men were tossed in the air, men and human limbs were 
sent to the sky, friend and foe found a watery grave in 
the Meuse. 

One could now survey with some calm the scene of 
the mighty slaughter. Dead lay upon dead, it was 
misery to behold them, and above and around them all 
there were flames and a thick, choking smoke. But one 
was already too brutalized to feel pity at the spectacle ; 
the feeling of humanity had been blown to all the winds. 
The groaning and crying, the pleading of the wounded 
did not touch one. Some Catholic nuns were lying dead 
before their convent. You saw it and passed on. 

The only building that had escaped destruction was 
the barracks of the 25th regiment of French dragoons. 
However, we had not much time to inspect things, for 
at seven o'clock the French artillery began already 
sending shell after shell into the village. We intrenched 
behind a thick garden wall, immediately behind the 
Meuse. Our side of the Meuse was flat, the opposite 
one went up steeply. There the French infantry had 
intrenched themselves, having built three positions on 
the slope, one tier above the other. As the enemy's 
artillery overshot the mark we remained outside their 
fire. We had however an opportunity to observe the 
effects of the shots sent by our own artillery into the 
enemy's infantry position on the slope in front of us. 
The shells (21 -cm. shells) whizzed above our heads and 
burst with a tremendous noise, each time causing hor- 
rible devastation in the enemy's trenches. 



THE HORRORS OF STREET FIGHTING 43 

The French were unable to resist long such a hall of 
shells. They retreated and abandoned all the heights 
of the Meuse. They had evacuated the town of Sedan 
without a struggle. In fact, that town remained com- 
pletely intact, in contrast to the completely demolished 
Donchery. Not a house in Sedan had suffered. When 
the rallying-call was sounded at Donchery it turned 
out that my company had lost thirty men in that fight. 
We mustered behind the barracks of the dragoons, 
and our company, which had shrunk to ninety men, was 
ordered to try and build a pontoon-bridge across the 
Meuse at a place as yet unknown to us. Having been 
reinforced by eighty men of the second company we 
marched away in small groups so as not to draw the 
enemy's attention to us. After an hour's march we 
halted in a small wood, about 200 yards away from the 
Meuse, and were allowed to rest until darkness began 
to fall. 

When it had become dark the bridge transportation 
column — it was that belonging to our division — came 
up across the fields, to be followed soon after by that 
of the army corps. All preparations having been made 
and the chief preliminaries, like the placing of the trestle 
and the landing boards, gone through, the various pon- 
toon-wagons drove up noiselessly, in order to be un- 
loaded just as noiselessly and with lightning speed. We 
had already finished four pontoons, i. e,, twenty yards 
of bridge, without being observed by our opponent. 
Everything went on all right. Suddenly the transport- 
able search-lights of the enemy went into action, and 
swept up and down the river. Though we had thrown 
ourselves flat upon the ground wherever we stood, our 
opponents had observed us, for the search-lights kept 
moving a little to and fro and finally kept our spot un- 



44 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

der continual illumination. We were discovered. We 
scarcely had time to consider, for an artillery volley 
almost immediately struck the water to our left and 
right. We were still lying flat on the ground when 
four more shots came along. That time a little nearer 
to the bridge, and one shot struck the bank of the river. 
Immediately another volley followed, and two shells 
struck the bridge. Some sappers fell into the water 
and two fell dead on the bridge ; those in the water swam 
ashore and escaped with a cold ducking. One only was 
drowned. It was the man of whom I told before that 
he was despised by his fellow-soldiers because he had 
hurt the child of a poor woman with a stone he had 
thrown through the window into her room. 



VI 

CROSSING THE MEUSE 

In spite of the continual and severe cannonading of 
the artillery we succeeded in fetching away the two dead 
soldiers and bringing them on land. The bridge had 
been much damaged so that we could do nothing but 
replace the ruined pontoons b}^ new ones. When the 
firing of the artillery had died down somewhat we began 
the difficult task for the second time. But we had 
scarcely begun when another salvo found its mark and 
damaged the bridge severely ; fortunately no losses were 
inflicted upon us that time. We were now ordered to 
retire, only to begin afresh after half an hour. 

The enemy's searchlights had been extinguished, and 
we were able to take some ten pontoons into line with- 
out being molested. Then, suddenly, we were again 
overwhelmed by the fire of the artillery; the enemy's 
patrols had noticed us. Several batteries had opened 
fire on us at the same time, and in ten minutes' time all 
our work was nothing but a heap of sinking pontoons ; 
twelve men were killed. 

We now were ordered to march away. Only eight 
of our party were left behind to look after the dead and 
wounded. We set out to get out of the danger zone. 
After having marched up-stream for a distance of about 
a mile and a quarter we halted and observed that the 
bridge-building section of the army coi-ps was present 
again. We were told that we should complete the indi- 

45 



46 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

vidual links of the bridge on land. Those bridge-links, 
consisting each of two pontoons, were firmly tied to- 
gether, provided with anchors and all accessories, com- 
pleted on land, and then let down into the water. The 
site of the bridge, which had meanwhile been determined 
upon, was made known to us, and we rowed with all our 
might down the river towards that spot. 

Our opponent, who had gained no knowledge of that 
ruse, did not molest us, and in quick succession all the 
bridge-links reached the determined place. The various 
links were rowed into their proper position with tre- 
mendous speed, and joined together. It did not take 
quite twenty minutes to get everything just sufficiently 
in shape. The infantry, who had kept in readiness, 
then rushed across the bridge which had been thickly 
strewn with straw so as to deaden the noise. 

At the same time we had begun to cross the river by 
pontoon at various points, and before the French were 
properly aware of what was going on, the other side 
of the river had been occupied by our troops and was 
soon firmly held by them. 

The French artillery and infantry now began to pour 
a terrific fire on the pontoons. We, the sappers, who 
were occupying the pontoons of the bridge, were now 
for the greater part relieved and replaced by infantry, 
but were distributed among the rowing pontoons to 
serve as crews. I was placed at the helm of one of the 
pontoons. With four sappers at the oars and eighteen 
infantrymen as our passengers we began our first trip 
in an infernal rain of missiles. We were lucky enough 
to reach the other side of the river with only one slightly 
wounded sapper. I relieved that man, who then took 
the steering part. On the return trip our pontoon was 
hit by some rifle bullets, but happily only above the 



CROSSING THE MEUSE 4.7 

water-line. To our right and left the pontoons were 
crossing the river, some of them in a sinking condition. 

The sappers, who are all able to swim, sought to 
reach the bank of the river and simply jumped into the 
water, whilst the infantrymen were drowned in crowds. 
Having landed and manned another pontoon we pushed 
off once more and, pulling the oars through the water 
with superhuman strength, we made the trip a second 
time. That time we reached the other side with two 
dead men and a wounded infantryman. We had not 
yet reached the other side when all the infantry jumped 
into the shallow water and waded ashore. We turned 
our boat to row back with the two dead men on board. 
Our hands began to hurt much from the continual row- 
ing and were soon covered with blisters and blood blis- 
ters. Still, we had to row, however much our hands 
might swell and hurt; there was no resting on your 
oars then. 

We were about twenty yards from shore when our 
pontoon was hit below the water-line by several rifle- 
bullets at the same time. A shot entering a pontoon 
leaves a hole no bigger that the shot itself, but its exit 
on the other side of the pontoon may be as big as a fist 
or a plate. Our pontoon then began to sink rapidly 
so that we sappers had no choice but to jump into the 
icy water. Scarcely had we left the boat when it dis- 
appeared; but all of us reached the river-bank safely. 
We were saved — for the moment. In spite of our wet 
clothes we had to man another boat immediately, and 
without properly regaining breath we placed our torn 
hands again on the oars. 

We had scarcely reached the middle of the river 
when we collided with another boat. That other boat, 
which had lost her helmsman, and two oarsmen, rammed 



48 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

us with such force that our pontoon turned turtle im- 
mediately and took down with her all the eighteen in- 
fantrymen besides one of the sappers. Four of us 
saved ourselves in another pontoon and, thoroughly wet, 
we steered her to the left bank. We had just landed 
when we were commanded to bring over a pontoon laden 
with ammunition, and the " joy-ride " was renewed. 
We crossed the INIeuse about another five times after 
that. 

Meanwhile day had come. On the left bank a terri- 
ble fight had begun between the German troops that 
had been landed, and the French. The Germans en- 
joyed the advantage that they were no longer exposed 
to the French artillery. 

We got a short rest, and lay wet to the skin in an 
old trench shivering all over with cold. Our hands 
were swollen to more than double their ordinary size; 
they hurt us so much that we could not even lift our 
water-bottle to our mouths. It must have been a har- 
rowing sight to watch us young, strong fellows lying 
on the ground helpless and broken. 



VII 

IN PURSUIT 

After a short rest we were commanded to search 
the burning houses for wounded men. We did not find 
many of them, for most of the severely wounded soldiers 
who had not been able to seek safety unaided had been 
miserably burnt to death, and one could only judge by 
the buttons and weapons of the poor wretches for what 
" fatherland " they had suffered their terrible death 
by fire. With many it was even impossible to find out 
the nationality they belonged to ; a little heap of ashes, 
a ruined house were all that was left of whole families, 
whole streets of families. 

It was only the wine cellars, which were mostly of 
strong construction, that had generally withstood the 
flames. The piping hot wine in bottles and barrels, 
proved a welcome refreshment for the soldiers who were 
wet to their skins and stiff with cold. Even at the risk 
of their lives ( for many of the cellars threatened to col- 
lapse) the soldiers would fetch out the wine and drink it 
greedily, however hot the wine might be. 

And strangely enough, former scenes were repeated. 
After the hot wine had taken effect, after again feel- 
ing refreshed and physically well, that same brutality 
which had become our second nature in war showed 
itself again in the most shameful manner. Most of us 
behaved as if we had not taken part in the unheard-of 
events of the last hours, as if we did not see the hor- 
rible reminders of the awful slaughter, as if we had en- 

49 



dO A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

tirely forgotten the danger of extinction which we had 
so narrowly escaped. No effort was made to do honor 
to the dead though every one had been taught that 
duty by his mother from the earliest infancy; there 
was nothing left of that natural shyness which the aver- 
age man feels in the presence of death. The pen re- 
fuses even to attempt a reproduction of the expressions 
used by officers and soldiers or a description of their 
actions, when they set about to establish the nationality 
or sex of the dead. Circumstances were stronger than 
we men, and I convinced myself again that it was only 
natural that all feelings of humanity should disappear 
after the daily routine of murdering and that only the 
instinct of self-preservation should survive in all its 
strength. The longer the war lasted the more murder- 
ous and bestial the men became. 

Meanwhile the fight between our troops that had 
crossed the river and the French on the other side of 
the Meuse had reached its greatest fury. Our troops 
had suffered great losses ; now our turn came. While 
we were crossing, the German artillery pounded the 
enemy's position with unheard-of violence. Scarcely 
had we landed and taken our places when our section 
proceeded to the assault. The artillery became silent, 
and running forward we tried to storm the slope lead- 
ing to the enemy positions. We got as near as 200 
yards when the French machine-guns came into action ; 
we were driven back with considerable losses. Ten min- 
utes later we attempted again to storm the positions, 
but had only to go back again exactly as before. 
Again we took up positions in our trenches, but all de- 
sire for fighting had left us ; every one stared stupidly 
in front of him. Of course we were not allowed to 
lose courage, though the victims of our useless assaults 



IN PURSUIT 51 

were covering the field, and our dead mates were con- 
stantly before our eyes. 

The artillery opened fire again ; reinforcements ar- 
rived. Half an hour later we stormed for the third 
time over the bodies of our dead comrades. That time 
we went forward in rushes, and when we halted before 
the enemy's trench for the last time, some twenty yards 
away from it, our opponent withdrew his whole first 
line. The riddle of that sudden retreat we were able 
to solve some time later. It turned out that the main 
portions of the French army had retreated long ago; 
we had merely been engaged in rear-guard actions which, 
however, had proved very costly to us. 

During the next hour the enemy evacuated all the 
heights of the Meuse. When we reached the ridge of 
those heights we were able to witness a horrifying sight 
with our naked eyes. The roads which the retreating 
enemy was using could be easily surveyed. In close 
marching formation the French were drawing off. The 
heaviest of our artillery (21-cm.) was pounding the re- 
treating columns, and shell after shell fell among the 
French infantry and other troops. Hundreds of 
French soldiers were literally torn to pieces. One could 
see bodies and limbs being tossed in the air and being 
caught in the trees bordering the roads. 

We sappers were ordered to rally and we were soon 
going after the fleeing enemy. It was our task to 
make again passable for our troops the roads which 
had been pounded and dug up by the shells; that was 
all the more difficult in the mid-day sun, as we had first 
to remove the dead and wounded. Two men would take 
a dead soldier by his head and feet and fling him in 
a ditch. Human corpses were here treated and used 
exactly as a board in bridge building. Severed arms 



52 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

and legs were flung through the air into the ditch in 
the same manner. How often since have I not thought 
of these and similar incidents, asking myself whether 
I thought those things improper or immoral at the 
time? Again and again I had to return a negative an- 
swer, and I am therefore fully convinced of how little 
the soldiers can be held responsible for the brutalities 
which all of them commit, to whatever nation they be- 
long. They are no longer civilized human beings, they 
are simply bloodthirsty brutes, for otherwise they would 
be bad, very bad soldiers. 

When, during the first months of the war a Social- 
Democratic member of parliament announced that he 
had resolved to take voluntary service in the army be- 
cause he believed that in that manner he could further 
the cause of humanity on the battle-field, many a one 
began to laugh, and it was exactly our Socialist com- 
rades in our company who made pointed remarks. For 
all of us were agreed that that representative of the 
people must either be very simple-minded or insincere. 

The dead horses and shattered batteries had also to 
be removed. We were not strong enough to get the 
bodies of the horses out of the way so we procured 
some horse roaming about without a master, and fas- 
tened it to a dead one to whose leg we had attached 
a noose, and thus we cleared the carcass out of the 
road. The portions of human bodies hanging in the 
trees we left, however, undisturbed. For who was there 
to care about such " trifles " ? 

We searched the bottles and knapsacks of the dead 
for eatable and drinkable things, and enjoyed the things 
found with the heartiest appetite imaginable. Hunger 
and thirst are pitiless customers that cannot be turned 
away by fits of sentimentality. 



IN PURSUIT 53 

Proceeding on our march we found the line of re- 
treat of the enemy thickly strewn with discarded rifles, 
knapsacks, and other accouterments. French soldiers 
that had died of sunstroke were covering the roads in 
masses. Others had crawled into the fields to the left 
and right, where they were expecting help or death. 
But we could not assist them for we judged ourselves 
happy if we could keep our worn-out bodies from col- 
lapsing altogether. But even if we had wanted to help 
them we should not have been allowed to do so, for the 
order was " Forward ! " 

At that time I began to notice in many soldiers what 
I had never observed before — they felt envious. 
Many of my mates envied the dead soldiers and wished 
to be in their place in order to be at least through with 
all their misery. Yet all of us were afraid of dying 
— afraid of dying, be it noted, not of death. All of 
us often longed for death, but we were horrified at 
the slow dying lasting hours which is the rule on the 
battle-field, that process which makes the wounded, 
abandoned soldier die piecemeal. I have witnessed the 
death of hundreds of young men in their prime, but 
I know of none among them who died willingly. A 
young sapper of the name of Kellner, whose home was 
at Cologne, had his whole abdomen ripped open by a 
shell splinter so that his entrails were hanging to the 
ground. Maddened by pain he begged me to assure 
him that he would not have to die. Of course, I as- 
sured him that his wounds were by no means severe and 
that the doctor would be there immediately to help him. 
Though I was a layman who had never had the slight- 
est acquaintance with the treatment of patients I was 
perfectly aware that the poor fellow could only live 



54 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

through a few hours of pain. But my words comforted 
him. He died ten minutes later. 

We had to march on and on. The captain told us 
we had been ordered to press the fleeing enemy as hard 
as possible. He was answered by a disapproving mur- 
mur from the whole section. For long days and nights 
we had been on our legs, had murdered like savages, had 
had neither opportunity nor possibility to eat or rest, 
and now they asked us worn-out men to conduct an ob- 
stinate pursuit. The captain knew very well what we 
were feeling, and tried to pacify us with kind words. 

The cavalry divisions had not been able to cross 
the Meuse for want of apparatus and bridges. For 
the present the pursuit had to be carried out by in- 
fantry and comparatively small bodies of artillery. 
Thus we had to press on in any case, at least until the 
cavalry and machine-gun sections had crossed the 
bridges that had remained intact farther down stream 
near Sedan. Round Sommepy the French rear-guard 
faced us again. When four batteries of our artillery 
went into action at that place our company and two 
companies of infantry with machine guns were told off 
to cover the artillery. 

The artillery officers thought that the covering troops 
wore insufficient, because aeroplanes had established 
the presence of large masses of hostile cavalry an at- 
tack from whom was feared. But reinforcements could 
not be had as there was a lack of troops for the mo- 
ment. So we had to take up positions as well as we 
could. We dug shallow trenches to the left and right 
of the battery in a nursery of fir trees which were about 
a yard high. The machine-guns were built in and got 
readjs and ammunition was made ready for use in large 
quantities. We had not yet finished our preparations 



IN PURSUIT 55 

when the shells of our artillery began to whizz above our 
heads and pound the ranks of our opponent. The fir 
nursery concealed us from the enemy, but a little wood, 
some 500 yards in front of us, effectively shut out 
our view. 

We were now instructed in what we were to do in 
case of an attack by cavalry. An old white-haired 
major of the infantry had taken command. We sap- 
pers were distributed among the infantry, but those 
brave " gentlemen," our officers, had suddenly disap- 
peared. Probably the defense of the fatherland is in 
their opinion only the duty of the common soldier. As 
those " gentlemen " are only there to command and as 
we had been placed under the orders of infantry officers 
for that undertaking, they had become superfluous and 
had taken French leave. 

Our instructions were to keep quiet in case of an 
attack by cavalry, to take aim, and not allow ourselves 
to be seen. We were not to fire until a machine-gun, 
commanded by the major in person, went into action, 
and then we were to fire as rapidly as the rifle could be 
worked; we were not to forget to aim quietly, but 
quickly. 

Our batteries fired with great violence, their aim- 
ing being regulated by a biplane, soaring high up in 
the air, by means of signals which were given by rock- 
ets whose signification experts only could understand. 

One quarter of an hour followed the other, and we 
were almost convinced that we should be lucky enough 
that time to be spared going into action. Suddenly 
things became lively. One man nudged the other, and 
all eyes were turned to the edge of the little wood some 
five hundred yards in front of us. A vast mass of 
horsemen emerged from both sides of the little wood 



56 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

and, uniting in front of it, rushed towards us. That 
immense lump of living beings approached our line in 
a mad gallop. Glancing back involuntarily I observed 
that our artillery had completely ceased firing and that 
its crews were getting their carbines ready to defend 
their guns. 

But quicker than I can relate it misfortune came 
thundering up. Without being quite aware of what 
I was doing I felt all over my body to find some place 
struck by a horse's hoof. The cavalry came nearer 
and nearer in their wild career. Already one could 
see the hoofs of the horses which scarcely touched the 
ground and seemed to fly over the few hundred yards 
of ground. We recognized the riders in their solid 
uniforms, we even thought we could notice the excited 
faces of the horsemen who were expecting a sudden hail 
of bullets to mow them down. Meanwhile they had 
approached to a distance of some 350 yards. The 
snorting of the horses was every moment becoming more 
distinct. No machine-gun firing was yet to be heard. 
Three hundred yards — 250. My neighbor poked me 
in the ribs rather indelicately, saying, " Has the old 
mass murderer (I did not doubt for a moment that he 
meant the major) gone mad! It's all up with us, to 
be sure ! " I paid no attention to his talk. Every 
nerve in my body was hammering awajs convulsively I 
clung to my rifle, and awaited the calamity. Two hun- 
dred yards ! Nothing as yet. Was the old chap blind 
or — ? One hundred and eighty yards! I felt a cold 
sweat running down my back and trembled as if my 
last hour had struck. One hundred and fifty! My 
neighbor pressed close to me. The situation became un- 
bearable. One hundred and thirty — an infernal noise 
had started. Rrrrrrrr — An overwhelming hail of 



IN PURSUIT 57 

bullets met the attacking party and scarcely a bullet 
missed the lump of humanity and beasts. 

The first ranks were struck down. Men and beasts 
formed a wall on which rolled the waves of succeeding 
horses, only to be smashed by that terrible hail of bul- 
lets. *' Continue firing ! " rang out the command which 
was not needed. " More lively ! " The murderous 
work was carried out more rapidly and with more crush- 
ing effect. Hundreds of volleys were sent straight into 
the heap of living beings struggling against death. 
Hundreds were laid low every second. Scarcely a hun- 
dred yards in front of us lay more than six hundred 
men and horses, on top of each other, beside each other, 
apart, in every imaginable position. What five minutes 
ago had been a picture of strength, proud horsemen, 
joyful youth, was now a bloody, shapeless, miserable 
lump of bleeding flesh. 

And what about ourselves? We laughed about our 
heroic deed and cracked jokes. When danger was over 
we lost that anxious feeling which had taken posses- 
sion of us. Was it fear? It is, of course, supposed 
that a German soldier knows no fear — at the most 
he fears God, but nothing else in the world — and yet 
it was fear, low vulgar fear that we feel just as much 
as the French, the English, or the Turks, and he who 
dares to contradict this and talk of bravery and the 
fearless courage of the warrior, has either never been 
in war, or is a vulgar liar and hj^pocrite. 

Why were we joyful and why did we crack jokes? 
Because it was the others and not ourselves who had to 
lose their lives that time. Because it was a life and 
death struggle. It was either we or they. We had a 
right to be glad and chase all sentimentality to the devil. 
Were we not soldiers, mass murderers, barbarians? 



VIII 

NEARLY BUEIED ALIVE ON THE BATTLEFIELD 

The commander of the artillery smilingly came up 
to the major of the infantry and thanked and congratu- 
lated him. 

We then went after the rest of our attackers who 
were in full flight. The machine guns kept them under 
fire. Some two hundred might have escaped; they fled 
in all directions. The artillery thereupon began again 
to fire, whilst we set about to care for our wounded ene- 
mies. It was no easy job, for we had to draw the 
wounded from beneath the horses some of which were 
still alive. The animals kicked wildly about them, and 
whenever they succeeded in getting free they rushed off 
like demented however severely they had been hurt. 
Many a wounded man who otherwise might have recov- 
ered was thus killed by the hoofs of the horses. 

With the little packet of bandaging material which we 
all had on us we bandaged the men, who were mostly 
severely wounded, but a good many died in our hands 
while we were trying to put on a temporary dressing. 
As far as they were still able to speak they talked to us 
with extreme vivacity. Though we did not understand 
their language we knew what they wanted to express, 
for their gestures and facial expressions were very elo- 
quent. They desired to express their gratitude for the 
charitable service we were rendering them, and like our- 
selves they did not seem to be able to understand how 

58 



NEARLY BURIED ALIVE ON THE BATTLEFIELD 59 

men could first kill each other, could inflict pain on each 
other, and then assist each other to the utmost of their 
ability. To them as well as to us this world seemed to 
stand on its head; it Avas a world in which they were 
mere marionettes, guided and controlled by a superior 
power. How often were we not made aware in that 
manner of the uselessness of all this human slaughter ! 

We common soldiers were here handling the dead and 
wounded as if we had never done anything else, and yet 
in our civilian lives most of us had an abhorrence and 
fear of the dead and the horribly mangled. War is a 
hard school-master who bends and reshapes his 
pupils. 

One section was busy with digging a common grave 
for the dead. We took away the papers and valuables 
of the dead, took possession of the eatable and drinkable 
stores to be found in the saddle bags attached to the 
horses and, when the grave was ready, we began to place 
the dead bodies in it. They were laid close together 
in order to utilize fully the available space. I, too, had 
been ordered to " bring in " the dead. The bottom of 
the grave was large enough for twenty-three bodies if 
the space was well utilized. When two layers of 
twenty-three had already been buried a sergeant of the 
artillery, who was standing near, observed that one of 
the " dead " was still alive. He had seen the " corpse " 
move the fingers of his right hand. On closer exam- 
ination it turned out that we came near burying a 
living man, for after an attempt lasting two hours we 
succeeded in restoring him to consciousness. The of- 
ficer of the infantry who supervised the work now 
turned to the two soldiers charged with getting the 
corpses ready and asked them whether they were sure 
that all the men buried were really dead. " Yes," the 



60 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

two replied, " we suppose they are all dead." That 
seemed to be quite sufficient for that humane officer, for 
he ordered the interments to proceed. Nobody 
doubted that there were several more among the 138 
men whom we alone buried in one grave (two other, still 
bigger, graves had been dug by different burial parties) 
from whose bodies life had not entirely flown. To be 
buried alive is just one of those horrors of the battle- 
field which your bar-room patriot at home (or in Amer- 
ica) does not even dream of in his philosophy. 

Nothing was to be seen of the enemy's infantry. It 
seemed that our opponent had sent only artillery and 
cavalry to face us. Meanwhile the main portions of 
our army came up in vast columns. Cavalry divisions 
with mounted artillery and machine-gun sections left 
all the other troops behind them. The enemy had suc- 
ceeded in disengaging himself almost completely from 
us, wherefor our cavalry accelerated their movements 
with the intention of getting close to the enemy and 
as quickly as possible in order to prevent his demoral- 
ized troops from resting at night. We, too, got ready 
to march, and were just going to march off when w^e 
received orders to form camp. The camping ground 
was exactly mapped out, as was always the case, by the 
superior command, so that they would know where we 
were to be found in case of emergency. We had 
scarcely reached our camping grounds when our field 
kitchen, which we thought had lost us, appeared before 
our eyes as if risen from out of the ground. The men 
of the field kitchen, who had no idea of the losses we 
had suffered during the last days, had cooked for the 
old number of heads. They were therefore not a little 
surprised when they found in the place of a brave com- 
pany of sturdy sappers only a crowd of ragged men, 



NEARLY BURIED ALIVE ON THE BATTLEFIELD 61 

the shadows of their former selves, broken and tired 
to their very bones. We were given canned soup, 
bread, meat, coffee, and a cigarette each. At last we 
were able to eat once again to our hearts' content. We 
could drink as much coffee as we liked. And then that 
cigarette, which appeared to most of us more important 
than eating and drinking! 

All those fine things and the expectation of a few 
hours of rest in some potato field aroused in us an al- 
most childish joy. We were as merry as boys and as 
noisy as street urchins. " Oh, what a joy to be a sol- 
dier lad ! " — that song rang out, subdued at first, then 
louder and louder. It died away quickly enough as one 
after the other laid down his tired head. We slept like 
the dead. 

We could sleep till six o'clock the next morning. 
Though all of us lay on the bare ground it was with no 
little trouble that they succeeded in waking us up. 
That morning breakfast was excellent. We received 
requisitioned mutton, vegetables, bread, coffee, a cup- 
ful of wine, and some ham. The captain admonished 
us to stuff in well, for we had a hard day's march be- 
fore us. At seven o'clock we struck camp. At the 
beginning of that march we were in fairly good humor. 
Whilst conversing we discovered that we had completely 
lost all reckoning of time. Nobody knew whether it 
was Monday or Wednesday, whether it was the fifth or 
the tenth of the month. Subsequently, the same phe- 
nomenon could be observed only in a still more notice- 
able way. A soldier in war never knows the date or 
day of the week. One day is like another. Whether 
it is Saturday, Thursday or Sunday, it means always 
the same routine of murdering. " Remember the Sab- 
bath day to keep it holy ! " " Six days shalt thou 



62 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

labor and do all thy work. But the seventh day — 
thou shalt not do any work." These, to our Christian 
rulers, are empty phrases. " Six days shalt thou mur- 
der and on the seventh day, too." 

When we halted towards noon near a large farm we 
had again to wait in vain for our field kitchen. So we 
helped ourselves. We shot one of the cows grazing in 
the meadows, slit its skin without first letting off the 
blood, and each one cut himself a piece of meat. The 
meat, which was still warm, was roasted a little in our 
cooking pots. By many it was also eaten raw with 
pepper and salt. That killing of cattle on our own 
hook was repeated almost daily. The consequence was 
that all suffered with their stomachs, for the meat was 
mostly still warm, and eating it without bread or other 
food did not agree with us. Still, the practice was con- 
tinued. If a soldier was hungry and if he found a pig, 
cow, or lamb during his period of rest, he would simply 
shoot the beast and cut off a piece for his own use, leav- 
ing the rest to perish. 

On our march we passed a little town, between At- 
tigny and Sommepy, crowded wdth refugees. Many of 
the refugees were ill, and am.ong their children an epi- 
demic was raging which was infecting the little ones of 
the town. A German medical column had arrived a 
short time before us. They asked for ten sappers — 
the maids of all work in war time — to assist them in 
their labors. I was one of the ten drafted off for that 
duty. 

We were first taken by the doctors to a wonderfully 
arranged park in the center of which stood a castle- 
like house, a French manor-house. The owner, a very 
rich Frenchman, lived there with his wife and an ex- 
cessive number of servants. Though there was room 



NEARLY BURIED ALIVE ON THE BATTLEFIELD 63 

enough In the palace for more than a hundred patients 
and refugees, that humane patriot refused to admit any 
one, and had locked and bolted the house and all en- 
trances to the park. It did not take us long to force 
all the doors and make all the locks useless. The lady 
of the house had to take up quarters in two large 
rooms, but that beauty of a male aristocrat had to live 
in the garage and had to put up with a bed of straw. 
In that way the high and mighty gentleman got a taste 
of the refugee life which so many of his countrymen 
had to go through. He was given his food by one of 
the soldiers of the medical corps; it was nourishing 
food, most certainly too nourishing for our gentleman. 
One of my mates, a Socialist comrade, observed drily, 

" It's at least a consolation that our own gang of 
junkers isn't any worse than that mob of French aris- 
tocrats; they are all of a kidney. If only the people 
were to get rid of the whole pack they wouldn't then 
have to tear each other to pieces any longer like wild 
beasts." 

In the meantime our mates had roamed through the 
country and captured a large barrel full of honey. 
Each one had filled his cooking pot with honey to the 
very brim and buckled it to his knapsack. The ten of 
us did likewise, and then we went off to find our section 
with which we caught up in a short time. But we had 
scarcely marched a few hundred yards when we were 
pursued by bees whose numbers increased by hundreds 
every minute. However much we tried to shake off 
the little pests their attentions grew worse and worse. 
Every one of us was stung ; many had their faces swol- 
len to such an extent that they were no longer able to 
see. The officers who were riding some twenty yards in 
front of us began to notice our slow movements. The 



64 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

" old man " came along, saw the bees and the swollen 
faces but could, of course, not grasp the meaning of it 
all until a sergeant proffered the necessary information. 
" Who's got honey in his cooking pot ? " the old chap 
cried angrily. " All of us," the sergeant replied. 
"You, too?" "Yes, captain." The old man was 
very wild, for he was not even able to deal out punish- 
ments. We had to halt and throw away the " accursed 
things," as our severe master called them. We helped 
each other to unbuckle the cooking pots, and our sweet 
provisions were flung far away into the fields on both 
sides of the road. With the honey we lost our cooking 
utensils, which was certainly not a very disagreeable 
relief. 

We continued our march in the burning noon-day 
sun. The ammunition columns and other army sec- 
tions which occupied the road gave the whirled-up dust 
no time to settle. All around us in the field refugees 
were camping, living there like poor, homeless gypsies. 
Many came up to us and begged for a piece of dry 
bread. 

Without halting we marched till late at night. To- 
wards nine o'clock in the evening we found ourselves 
quite close to the town hall of Sommepy. Here, in and 
about Sommepy, fighting had started again, and we 
had received orders to take part in it to the northwest 
of Sommepy. 



IX 

SOLDIERS SHOOTING THEIR OWN OFFICERS 

It was dark already, and we halted once more. The 
ground around us was strewn with dead. In the middle 
of the road were some French batteries and munition 
wagons, with the horses still attached; but horses and 
men were dead. After a ten minutes' rest we started 
again. Marching more quickly, we now approached a 
small wood in which dismounted cavalry and infantry 
were waging a desperate hand-to-hand struggle with 
the enemy. So as to astonish the latter we had to 
rush in with a mighty yell. Under cover of darkness 
we had succeeded in getting to the enemy's rear. Taken 
by surprise by the unexpected attack and our war 
whoop, most of the Frenchmen lifted their hands and 
begged for quarter, which was, however, not granted 
by the infuriated cavalrymen and infantry. When, on 
our side, now and then the murdering of defenseless 
men seemed to slacken it was encouraged again by the 
loud commands of the officers. " No quarter ! " " Cut 
them all down ! " Such were the orders of those esti- 
mable gentlemen, the officers. 

We sappers, too, had to participate in the cold- 
blooded slaughtering of defenseless men. The French 
were defenseless because they threw away their arms 
and asked for quarter the moment that they recognized 
the futility of further resistance. But the officers then 
saw to it, as on many earlier and later occasions, that 

" too many prisoners were not made." The sapper 

65 



66 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

carries a bayonet which must not be fixed to the rifle 
according to international agreement, because the back 
of that bayonet is an extremely sharp steel saw, three 
millimeters in thickness. In times of peace the sapper 
never does bayonet practice, the bayonet being exclu- 
sively reserved for mechanical purposes. But what 
does militarism care for international law! We here 
had to fix the saw, as had always been done since the 
beginning of the war. Humanity was a jest when one 
saw an opponent with the toothed saw in his chest and 
the victim, who had long given up all resistance, endeav- 
oring to remove the deadly steel from the wound. 
Often that terrible tool of murder had fastened itself so 
firmly in the victim's chest that the attacker, in order 
to get his bayonet back, had to place his foot on the 
chest of the miserable man and try with all his might to 
remove the weapon. 

The dead and wounded lay everywhere covered with 
terrible injuries, and the crying of the wounded, which 
might soften a stone, but not a soldier's heart, told of 
the awful pain which those " defenders of their coun- 
try " had to suflTer. 

However, not all the soldiers approved of that sense- 
less, that criminal murdering. Some of the " gentle- 
men " who had ordered us to massacre our French com- 
rades were killed " by mistake " in the darkness of the 
night, by their own people, of course. Such " mis- 
takes " repeat themselves almost daily, and if I keep 
silence with regard to many such mistakes which I could 
relate, giving the exact name and place, the reader will 
know why. 

During that night it was a captain and first lieuten- 
ant who met his fate. An infantryman who was serv- 
ing his second year stabbed the captain through the 



SOLDIERS SHOOTING THEIR OWN OFFICERS 67 

stomach with his bayonet, and almost at the same time 
the first lieutenant got a stab in the back^ Both men 
were dead in a few minutes. Those that did the deeds 
showed not the slightest signs of repentance, and not 
one of us felt inclined to reproach them ; on the con- 
trary, every one knew that despicable, brutal murder- 
ers had met their doom. 

In this connection I must mention a certain incident 
which necessitates my jumping a little ahead of events. 
When on the following day I conversed with a mate 
from my company and asked him for the loan of his 
pocket knife he drew from his pocket three cartridges 
besides his knife. I was surprised to find him carry- 
ing cartridges in his trousers' pockets and asked him 
whether he had no room for them in his cartridge case. 
" There's room enough," he replied, " but those three 
are meant for a particular purpose; there's a name 
inscribed on each of them." Some time after — we had 
meanwhile become fast friends — I inquired again- after 
the three bullets. He had one of them left. I re- 
flected and remembered two sergeants who had treated 
us like brutes in times of peace, whom we had hated as 
one could only hate slave-drivers. They had found 
their grave in French soil. 

The murder did not cease as long as an opponent was 
alive. We were then ordered to see whether all the 
enemies lying on the ground were really dead or un- 
able to fight. " Should you find one who pretends to be 
dead, he must be killed without mercy." That was the 
order we received for that tour of inspection. How- 
ever, the soldiers who had meanwhile quieted down a 
little and who had thus regained their senses took no 
trouble to execute the shameful command. What the 
soldiers thought of it is shown by the remark of a man 



68 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

belonging to my company who said, " Let's rather loolc 
if the two officers are quite dead; if not, we shall have 
to kill them, too, without mercy." An order was an 
order, he added. 

We now advanced quicklj^, but our participation was 
no longer necessary, for the whole line of the enemy 
retired and then faced us again, a mile and a quarter 
southwest of Sommepy. Sommepy itself was burning 
for the greater part, and its streets were practically 
covered with the dead. The enemy's artillery was still 
bombarding the place, and shells were falling all around 
us. Several hundred prisoners were gathered in the 
market-place. A few shells fell at the same time among 
the prisoners, but they had to stay where they were. 
An officer of my company, lieutenant of the reserve 
Neesen, observed humanely that that could not do any 
harm, for thus the French got a taste of their own 
shells. He was rewarded with some cries of shame. 
A Socialist comrade, a reservist, had the pluck to cry 
aloud, " Do you hear that, comrades ? That's the no- 
ble sentiment of an exploiter; that fellow is the son of 
an Elberfeld capitalist and his father is a sweating- 
den keeper of the worst sort. When you get home 
again do not forget what this capitalist massacre has 
taught you. Those prisoners are proletarians, are our 
brethren, and what we are doing here in the interest of 
that gang of capitalist crooks is a crime against our 
own body ; it is murdering our own brothers ! " He 
was going to continue talking, but the sleuths were soon 
upon him, and he was arrested. He threw down his 
gun with great force; then he quietly suffered himself 
to be led away. 

All of us were electrified. Not one spoke a word. 
One suddenly beheld quite a different world. We had a 



SOLDIERS SHOOTING THEIR OWlSf'P ICERS 69 

vision which kept our imagination prisoner. Was it 
true what we had heard — that those prisoners were 
not our enemies at all, that they were our brothers? 
That which formerly — O how long ago might that 
have been ! — in times of peace, had appeared to us as 
a matter of course had been forgotten; in war we had 
regarded our enemies as our friends and our friends as 
our enemies. Those words of the Elberfeld comrade 
had lifted the fog from our brains and from before our 
eyes. We had again a clear view; we could recognize 
things again. 

One looked at the other and nodded without speak- 
ing; each one felt that the brave words of our friend 
had been a boon to us, and none could refrain from 
inwardly thanking and appreciating the bold man. 
The man in front of me, who had been a patriot all 
along as far as I knew, but who was aware of my 
views, pressed my hand, saying. " Those few words 
have opened my eyes; I was blind; we are friends. 
Those words came at the proper time." Others again 
I heard remark : " You can't surpass Schotes ; such a 
thing requires more courage than all of us together 
possess. For he knew exactly the consequences that 
follow when one tells the truth. Did you see the last 
look he gave us ? That meant as much as, ' Don't be 
concerned about me; I shall fight my way through to 
the end. Be faithful workers ; remain faithful to your 
class ! ' " 

The place, overcrowded with wounded soldiers, was 
almost entirely occupied by the Germans. The medical 
corps could not attend to all the work, for the wounded 
kept streaming in in enormous numbers. So we had to 
lend a helping hand, and bandaged friend and enemy to 
the best of our ability. But contrary to earlier times 



70 A GERMTiN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

when the wounded were treated considerately, things 
were now done more roughly. 

The fighting to the south of the place had reached 
its greatest violence towards one o'clock in the after- 
noon, and when the Germans began to storm at all 
points, the French retired from their positions in the 
direction of Suippes. 

Whether our ragged company was no longer consid- 
ered able to fight or whether we were no longer required, 
I do not know; but we got orders to seek quarters. 
We could find neither barn nor stable, so we had to 
camp in the open; the houses were all crowded with' 
wounded men. 

On that day I was commanded to mount guard and 
was stationed with the camp guard. At that place 
arrested soldiers had to call to submit to the punish- 
ment inflicted on them. Among them were seven sol- 
diers who had been sentenced to severe confinement 
which consisted in being tied up for two hours. 

The officer on guard ordered us to tie the " crim- 
inals " to trees in the neighborhood. Every arrested 
soldier had to furnish for that purpose the rope with 
which he cleaned his rifle. The victim I had to attend 
to was sapper Lohmer, a good Socialist. I was to tie 
his hands behind his back, wind the loose end of the rope 
round his chest, and tie him with his back towards the 
tree. In that position my comrade was to stand for 
two hours, exposed to the mockery of officers and ser- 
geants. But comrade Lohmer had been marching with 
the rest of us in a broiling sun for a whole day, had all 
night fought and murdered for the dear Fatherland 
which was now giving him thanks by tying him up with 
a rope. 

I went up to him and told him that I would not tie 



SOLDIERS SHOOTING THEIR OWN OFFICERS 71 

him to the tree. " Do it, man," he tried to persuade 
me ; " if you don't do it another one will. I shan't be 
cross with you, you know." — " Let others do it ; I won't 
fetter you." 

The officer, our old friend Lieutenant Spahn, who was 
getting impatient, came up to us. " Can't you see 
that all the others have been seen to.^ How long do 
you expect me to wait.'' " I gave him a sharp looky 
but did not answer. Again he bellowed out the com- 
mand to tie my comrade to the tree. I looked at him 
for a long time and did not deign him worthy of an an- 
swer. He then turned to the " criminal " who told him 
that I could not get myself to do the job as we were 
old comrades and friends. Besides, I did not want to 
fetter a man who was exhausted and dead tired. 
" So you won't do it ? " he thundered at me, and when 
again he received no reply — for I was resolved not to 
speak another word to the fellow — he hissed, " That 

b is a Red to the marrow ! " I shall never in my 

life forget the look of thankfulness that Lohmer gave 
me; it rewarded me for the unpleasantness I had in 
consequence of my refusal. Of course others did what 
I refused to do ; I got two weeks' confinement. Nat- 
urally I was proud at having been a man for once at 
least. As a comrade I had remained faithful to my 
mate. Yet I had gained a point. They never ordered 
me again to perform such duty, and I was excluded 
from the guard that day. I could move about freely 
and be again a free man for a few hours. 

The evening I had got off I employed to undertake a 
reconnoitering expedition through the surrounding 
country in the company of several soldiers. We spoke 
about the various incidents of the day and the night, 
and, to the surprise, I daresay, of every one of us, we 



72 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

discovered that very little was left of the overflowing 
enthusiasm and patriotism that had seized so many 
during the first days of the war. Most of the soldiers 
made no attempt to conceal the feeling that we poor 
devils had absolutely nothing to gain in this war, that 
we had only to lose our lives or, which was still worse, 
that we should sit at some street corner as crippled 
" war veterans " trying to arouse the pity of passers-by 
by means of some squeaking organ. 

At that moment it was already clear to us in view of 
the enormous losses that no state, no public benevolent 
societies would be able after the war to help the many 
hundreds of thousands who had sacrificed their health 
for their " beloved country." The number of the un- 
fortunate wrecks is too great to be helped even with the 
best of intentions. 

Those thoughts which occupied our minds to an ever 
increasing extent did not acquire a more cheerful as- 
pect on our walk. The wounded were lying every- 
where, in stables, in barns, wherever there was room for 
them. If the wounds were not too severe the wounded 
men were quite cheerful. They felt glad at having got 
off so cheaply, and thought the war would long be over 
when they should be well again. They lived by hopes 
just as the rest of uSr 



SACKING SUIPPES 

The inhabitants of the place who had not fled were 
all quartered in a large wooden shed. Their dwelling 
places had almost all been destroyed, so that they had 
no other choice but live in the shed that was offered 
them. Only one little, old woman sat, bitterly crying, 
on the ruins of her destroyed home, and nobody could 
induce her to leave that place. 

In the wooden shed one could see women and men, 
youths, children and old people, all in a great jumble. 
Many had been wounded by bits of shell or bullets ; 
others had been burned by the fire. Everywhere one 
could observe the same terrible misery — sick mothers 
with half-starved babies for whom there was no milk 
on hand and who had to perish there; old people who 
were dying from the excitement and terrors of the last 
few days ; men and women in the prime of their life who 
were slowly succumbing to their wounds because there 
was nobody present to care for them. 

A soldier of the landwehr, an infantryman, was 
standing close to me and looked horror-struck at some 
young mothers who were trying to satisfy the hunger 
of their babes. " I, too," he said reflectively, " have a 
good wife and two dear children at home. I can there- 
fore feel how terrible it must be for the fathers of these 
poor families to know their dear ones are in the grip of 
a hostile army. The French soldiers think us to be 
still worse barbarians than we really are, and spread 

73 



74* A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

that impression through their letters among those left 
at home. I can imagine the fear in which they are of 
us everywhere. During the Boxer rebellion I was in 
China as a soldier, but the slaughter in Asia was child's 
play in comparison to the barbarism of civilized Euro- 
pean nations that I have had occasion to witness in 
this war in friend and foe." After a short while he 
continued : " I belong to the second muster of the 
landwehr, and thought that at my age of 37 it would 
take a long time before my turn came. But we old ones 
were no better off than you of the active army divisions 
— sometimes even worse. Just like you we were sent 
into action right from the beginning, and the heavy 
equipment, the long marches in the scorching sun meant 
much hardship to our worn-out proletarian bodies so 
that many amongst us thought they would not be able 
to live through it all. 

" How often have I not wished that at least one of 
my children were a boy? But to-day I am glad and 
happy that they are girls ; for, if they were boys, they 
would have to shed their blood one day or spill that of 
others, only because our rulers demand it." We now 
became well acquainted with each other. Conversing 
with him I got to know that dissatisfaction was still 
more general in his company than in mine and that it 
was only the ruthless infliction of punishment, the iron 
discipline, that kept the men of the landwehr, who had 
to think of wife and children, from committing acts of 
insubordination. Just as we were treated they treated 
those older men for the slightest breach of discipline; 
they were tied with ropes to trees and telegraph poles. 

" Dear Fatherland, may peace be thine ; 

Fast stands and firm the Watch on the Rhine." 



SACKING SUIPPES 75 

A company of the Hessian landwehr, all of them old 
soldiers, were marching past with sore feet and droop- 
ing heads. They had probably marched for a long 
while. Officers were attempting to liven them up. 
They were to sing a song, but the Hessians, fond of 
singing and good-natured as they certainly are known 
to be, were by no means in a mood to sing. " I tell you 
to sing, you swine ! " the officer cried, and the pitifully 
helpless-looking " swine " endeavored to obey the com- 
mand. Here and there a thin voice from the ranks of 
the overtired men could be heard to sing, " Deutschland, 
Deutschland uber alles, iiber alles in der Welt." 
With sore feet and broken energy, full of disgust with 
their " glorious " trade of warriors, they sang that 
symphony of supergermanism that sounded then like 
blasphemy, nay, like a travesty — " Deutschland, 
Deutschland uber alles, uber alles in der Welt." 

Some of my mates who had watched the procession 
like myself came up to me saying, '' Come, let's go to the 
bivouac. Let's sleep, forget, and think no more." 

We were hungry and, going " home," we caught some 
chicken, " candidates for the cooking pot," as we used 
to call them. They were eaten half cooked. Then we 
lay down in the open and slept till four o'clock in the 
morning when we had to be ready to march off. Our 
goal for that day was Suippes. Before starting on the 
march an army order was read out to us. " Soldiers, 
it said, " His Majesty, the Emperor, our Supreme War 
Lord, thanks the soldiers of the Fourth Army, and ex- 
presses to all his imperial thankfulness and apprecia- 
tion. You have protected our dear Germany from the 
invasion of hostile hordes. We shall not rest until the 
last opponent lies beaten on the ground, and before the 
leaves fall from the trees we shall be at home again as 



76 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENXE 

victors. The enemy is in full retreat, and the Almighty 
will continue to bless our arms." 

Having duly acknowledged receipt of the message by 
giving those three cheers for the " Supreme War Lord " 
which had become almost a matter of daily routine, we 
started on our march and had now plenty of time and 
opportunity to talk over the imperial " thankfulness." 
We were not quite clear as to the " fatherland " we had 
to " defend " here in France. One of the soldiers 
thought the chief thing was that God had blessed our 
arms, whereupon another one, who had been president 
of a freethinking religious community in his native city 
for many a long year, replied that a religious man who 
babbled such stuff was committing blasphemy if he had 
ever taken religion seriously. 

All over the fields and in the ditches lay the dead 
bodies of soldiers whose often sickening wounds were 
terrible to behold. Thousands of big flies, of which 
that part of the country harbors great swarms, were 
covering the human corpses which had partly begun to 
decompose and were spreading a stench that took away 
one's breath. In between these corpses, in the burning 
sun, the poor, helpless refugees were camping, because 
they were not allowed to use the road as long as the 
troops were occupying it. But when were the roads 
not occupied by troops! 

Once, when resting, we chanced to observe a fight be- 
tween three French and four German aeroplanes. We 
heard above us the well-known hum of a motor and saw 
three French and two German machines approach one 
another. All of them were at a great altitude when all 
at once we heard the firing of machine-guns high up in 
the air. The two Germans were screwing themselves 
higher up, unceasingly peppered by their opponents, 



SACKING SUIPPES 77 

and were trying to get above the Frenchmen. But the 
French, too, rose in great spirals in order to frustrate 
the intentions of the Germans. Suddenly one of the 
German flying-men threw a bomb and set alight a 
French machine which at the same time was enveloped 
in flames and, toppling over, fell headlong to the ground 
a few seconds after. Burning rags came slowly flutter- 
ing to the ground after it. Unexpectedly two more 
strong German machines appeared on the scene, and 
then the Frenchmen took to flight immediately, but not 
before they had succeeded in disabling a German Rum- 
pler-Taube by machine-gun fire to such an extent that 
the damaged aeroplane had to land in a steep glide. 
The other undamaged machines disappeared on the 
horizon. 

That terrible and beautiful spectacle had taken a few 
minutes. It was a small, unimportant episode, which 
had orphaned a few children, widowed a woman — some- 
where in France. 

In the evening we reached the little town of Suippes 
after a long march. The captain said to us, " Here in 
Suippes there are swarms of franctireurs. We shall 
therefore not take quarters but camp in the open. 
Anybody going to the place has to take his rifle and 
ammunition with him." After recuperating a little we 
went to the place in order to find something to eat. 
Fifteen dead civilians were lying in the middle of the 
road. They were inhabitants of the place. Why they 
had been shot we could not learn. A shrugging of the 
shoulders was the only answer one could get from 
anybody. The place itself, the houses, showed no ex- 
ternal damage. 

I have never in war witnessed a greater general pil- 
laging than here in Suippes. It was plain that we had 



78 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

to live and had to have food. The inhabitants and 
storekeepers having fled, it was often impossible to pay 
for the things one needed. Men simply went into some 
store, put on socks and underwear, and left their old 
things ; they then went to some other store, took the 
food they fancied, and hied themselves to a wine-cellar 
to provide themselves to their hearts' content. The 
men of the ammunition trains who had their quarters in 
the town, as also the men of the transport and am- 
bulance corps and troopers went by the hundred to 
search the homes and took whatsoever pleased them 
most. The finest and largest stores — Suippes sup- 
plied a large tract of country and had comparatively 
extensive stores of all descriptions — were empty shells 
in a few hours. Whilst men were looking for one thing 
others were ruined and broken. The drivers of the 
munition and transport trains dragged away whole 
sacks full of the finest silk, ladies' garments, linen, 
boots, and shoved them in their shot-case. Children's 
shoes, ladies' shoes, everything was taken along, even 
if it had to be thrown away again soon after. Later 
on, when the field-post was running regularly, many 
things acquired in that manner were sent home. But 
all parcels did not reach their destination on account of 
the unreliable service of the field-post, and the maximum 
weight that could be sent proved another obstacle. 
Thus a pair of boots had to be divided and each sent in 
a separate parcel if they were to be dispatched by field- 
post. One of our sappers had for weeks carried about 
with him a pair of handsome boots for his fiancee and 
then had them sent to her in two parcels. However, 
the field-post did not guarantee delivery; and thus the 
war bride got the left boot, and not the right one. 
An important chocolate factory was completely 



SACKING SUIPPES 79 

sacked, chocolates and candy lay about in heaps trod- 
den under foot. Private dwellings that had been left 
by their inhabitants were broken into, the wine-cellars 
were cleared of their contents, and the windows were 
smashed — a speciality of the cavalry. 

As we had to spend the night in the open we tried to 
procure some blankets, and entered a grocer's store in 
the market-place. The store had been already partly 
demolished. The living-rooms above it had remained, 
however, untouched, and all the rooms had been left 
unlocked. It could be seen that a woman had had 
charge of that house ; everything was arranged in such 
a neat and comfortable way that one was immediately 
seized by the desire to become also possessed of such a 
lovely little nest. But all was surpassed by a room of 
medium size where a young lady had apparently lived. 
Only with great reluctance we entered that sanctum. 
To our surprise we found hanging on the wall facing 
the door a caustic drawing on wood bearing the legend 
in German : " Ehret die Frauen, sie flechten und weben 
himmlische Rosen ins irdische Leben." (Honor the 
women, they work and they weave heavenly roses in life's 
short reprieve.) The occupant was evidently a young 
bride, for the various pieces of the trousseau, trimmed 
with dainty blue ribbons, could be seen in the wardrobes 
in a painfully spick and span condition. All the ward- 
robes were unlocked. We did not touch a thing. We 
were again reminded of the cruelty of war. Millions 
it turned into beggars in one night; the fondest hopes 
and desires were destroyed. When, the next morn- 
ing, we entered the house again, driven by a presenti- 
ment of misfortune, we found everything completely de- 
stroyed. Real barbarians had been raging here, who 
had lost that thin varnish with which civilization covers 



80 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

the brute in man. The whole trousseau of the young 
bride had been dragged from the shelves and was still 
partly covering the floor. Portraits, photographs, 
looking-glasses, all lay broken on the floor. Three of 
us had entered the room, and all three of us clenched 
our fists in helpless rage. 

Having received the command to remain in Suippes 
till further orders we could observe the return of many 
refugees the next day. They came back in crowds from 
the direction of Chalons-sur-Marne, and found a 
wretched, dreary waste in the place of their peaceful 
homes. The owner of a dry -goods store was just re- 
turning as we stood before his house. He collapsed 
before the door of his house, for nothing remained of his 
business. We went up to the man. He was a Hebrew 
and spoke German. After having somewhat recovered 
his self-possession he told us that his business had con- 
tained goods to the value of more than 8000 francs, 
and said : " If the soldiers had only taken what they 
needed I should have been content, for I expected noth- 
ing less ; but I should have never believed of the Ger- 
mans that they would destroy all of my possessions." 
In his living-rooms there was not even a cup to be found. 
The man had a wife and five children, but did not know 
where they were at that time. And his fate was shared 
by uncounted others, here and elsewhere. 

I should tell an untruth if I were to pretend that his 
misery touched me very deeply. It is true that the best 
among us — and those were almost always the men who 
had been active in the labor movement at home, who 
hated war and the warrior's trade from the depth of 
their soul — were shaken out of their lethargy and in- 
difference by some especially harrowing incident, but 
the mass was no longer touched even by great tragedies. 



SACKING SUIPPES 81 

When a man is accustomed to step over corpses with a 
cold smile on his lips, when he has to face death every 
minute day and night, he gradually loses that finer feel- 
ing for human things and humanity. Thus it must not 
surprise one that soldiers could laugh and joke in the 
midst of awful devastation, that they brought wine to a 
concert room in which there was a piano and an electric 
organ, and had a joyful time with music and wine. 
They drank till they were unconscious ; they drank with 
sergeants and corporals, pledging " brotherhood " ; and 
they rolled arm in arm through the streets with their 
new " comrades." 

The officers would see nothing of this, for they did 
not behave much better themselves, even if they knew 
how to arrange things in such a manner that their 
" honor " did not entirely go to the devil. The " gen- 
tleman " of an officer sends his orderly out to buy him 
twenty bottles of wine, but as he does not give his serv- 
ant any money wherewith to " buy," the orderly obeys 
the command the best he can. He knows that at any 
rate he must not come back without the wine. In that 
manner the officers provide themselves with all possible 
comforts without losing their " honor." We had five 
officers in our company who for themselves alone needed 
a wagon with four horses for transporting their bag- 
gage. As for ourselves, the soldiers, our knapsack was 
still too large for the objects we needed for our daily 
life. 



XI 



MARCHING TO THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE INTO 

THE TRAP 

A LARGE proportion of the " gentlemen," our officers, 
regarded war as a pleasant change to their enchanting 
social life in the garrison towns, and knew exactly (at 
least as far as the officers of my company were con- 
cerned) how to preserve their lives as long as possible 
" in the interest of the Fatherland." When I buried the 
hatchet, fourteen months after, our company had lost 
three times its original strength, but no fresh supply 
of officers had as yet become necessary ; we had not lost 
a single officer. In Holland I got to know, some months 
later, that after having taken my " leave " they were 
still very well preserved. One day at Rotterdam, I saw 
a photo in the magazine. Die WocJie, showing " Six 
members of the 1st. Company of the Sapper Regiment 
No. 30 with the Iron Cross of the 1st. Class." The 
picture had been taken at the front, and showed the five 
officers and Corporal Bock with the Iron Cross of the 
1st. Class. Unfortunately Scherl ^ did not betray 
whether those gentlemen had got the distinction for hav- 
ing preserved their lives for further service. 

We spent the following night at the place, and then 
had to camp again in the open, '' because the place 
swarmed with franctireurs." In reality no franctireurs 
could be observed, so that it was quite clear to us that 

1 A proprietor of many German sensational newspapers. 

82 



TO THE MARNE — INTO THE TRAP 83 

it was merely an attempt to arouse again our resent- 
ment against the enemy which was dying down. They 
knew very well that a soldier is far more tractable and 
pliant when animated by hatred against the '' enemy." 
The next day Chalons-sur-]Marne was indicated as 
the next goal of our march. That day was one of the 
most fatiguing we experienced. Early in the morning 
already, when we started, the sun was sending down its 
fiery shafts. Suippes is about 21 miles distant from 
Chalons-sur-Marne. The distance would not have been 
the worst thing, in spite of the heat. We had marched 
longer distances before. But that splendid road from 
Suippes to Chalons does not deviate an inch to the right 
or left, so that the straight, almost endless seeming 
road lies before one like an immense white snake. How- 
ever far we marched that white ribbon showed no end- 
ing, and when one looked round, the view was exactly 
the same. During the whole march we only passed one 
little village; otherwise all was bare and uncultivated. 
Many of us fainted or got a heat-stroke and had to 
be taken along by the following transport column. We 
could see by the many dead soldiers, French and Ger- 
man, whose corpses were lying about all along the road, 
that the troops who had passed here before us had 
met with a still worse fate. 

We had finished half of our march without being al- 
lowed to take a rest. I suppose the " old man " was 
afraid the machine could not be set going again if once 
our section had got a chance to rest their tired limbs 
on the ground, and thus we crawled along dispirited 
like a lot of snails, carrying the leaden weight of the 
" monkey " in the place of a house. The monotony of 
the march was only somewhat relieved when we reached 
the immense camp of Chalons. It is one of the greatest 



84 A GERxMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

military camps in France. Towards three o'clock in 
the afternoon we beheld Chalons in the distance, and 
when we halted towards four o'clock in an orchard out- 
side the town, all of us, without an exception, fell down 
exhausted. 

The field kitchen, too, arrived, but nobody stirred for 
a time to fetch food. We ate later on, and then de- 
sired to go to the town to buy several things, chiefly, 
I daresay, tobacco which we missed terribly. Nobody 
was allowed however, to leave camp. We were told that 
it was strictly forbidden to enter the town. " Chalons," 
so the tale went, had paid a war contribution, and 
nobody could enter the town. With money you can 
do everything, even in war. Mammon had saved 
Chalons from pillage. 

Far away could be heard the muffled roar of the guns. 
We had the presentiment that bur rest would not be of 
long duration. The rolling of the gun firing became 
louder and louder, but we did not know yet that a 
battle had started here that should turn out a very 
unfortunate one for the Germans — the five days' battle 
of the Marne. 

At midnight we were aroused by an alarm, and half 
an hour later we were on the move already. The cool 
air of the night refreshed us, and we got along fairly 
rapidly in spite of our exhaustion. At about four 
o'clock in the morning we reached the village of Chepy. 
At that place friend Mammon had evidently not been so 
merciful as at Chalons, for Chepy had been thoroughly 
sacked. We rested for a short time, and noticed with 
a rapid glance that preparations were just being made 
to shoot two franctireurs. They were little peasants 
who were alleged to have hidden from the Germans a 
French machine-gun and its crew. The sentence was 



TO THE MARNE — INTO THE TRAP 85 

carried out. One was never at a loss in finding reasons 
for a verdict. And the population had been shown who 
their " master " was. 

The little village of Pogny half-way between Chalons- 
sur-Marne and \'itry-le-Fran9ois, had fared no better 
than Chepy, as we observed when we entered it at nine 
o'clock in the morning. We had now got considerably 
nearer to the roaring guns. The slightly wounded who 
were coming back and the men of the ammunition col- 
umns told us that a terrible battle was raging to the 
west of Vitry-le-Francois. At four o'clock in the after- 
noon we reached Vitry-le-Fran9ois, after a veritable 
forced march. The whole town was crowded with 
wounded ; every building, church, and school was full of 
wounded soldiers. The town itself was not damaged. 

Here things must have looked very bad for the Ger- 
mans for, without allowing us a respite, we were ordered 
to enter the battle to the west of Vitry-le-Fran9ois. 
We had approached the firing line a little more than 
two miles when we got within reach of the enemy's cur- 
tain of fire. A terrific hail of shells was ploughing up 
every foot of ground. Thousands of corpses of Ger- 
man soldiers were witnesses of the immense losses the 
Germans had suffered in bringing up all available re- 
serves. The French tried their utmost to prevent the 
Germans from bringing in their reserves, and increased 
their artillery fire to an unheard-of violence. 

It seemed impossible for us to break through that 
barricade of fire. Hundreds of shells were bursting 
very minute. We were ordered to pass that hell 
singly and at a running pace. We were lying on the 
ground and observed how the first of our men tried 
to get through. Some ran forward like mad, not heed- 
ing the shells that were bursting around them, and got 



86 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

through. Others were entirely buried by the dirt dug 
up by the shells or were torn to pieces by shell splinters. 
Two men had scarcely reached the line when they 
were struck by a bull's-eye, i. e., the heavy shell exploded 
at their feet leaving nothing of them. 

Who can imagine what we were feeling during those 
harrowing minutes as we lay crouching on the ground 
not quite a hundred feet away, seeing everything, and 
only waiting for our turn to come.'' One had entangled 
oneself in a maze of thoughts. Suddenly one of the 
officers would cry, " The next one ! " That was I ! 
Just as if roused out of a bad dream, I jump up and 
race away like mad, holding the rifle in my right hand 
and the bayonet in my left. I jumped aside a few 
steps in front of two bursting shells and run into two 
others which are bursting at the same time. I leap 
back several times, run forward again, race about 
wildly to find a gap through which to escape. But — 
fire and iron everywhere. Like a hunted beast one 
seeks some opening to save oneself. Hell is in front of 
me and behind me the officer's revolver, kept read}^ to 
shoot. — The lumps of steel fall down like a heavy 
shower from high above. Hell and damnation ! I 
blindly run and run and run, until somebody gets me by 
my coat. " We're there ! " somebody roars into my 
ear. " Stop! Are 3^ou wounded? Have a look; per- 
haps you are and don't know it?" Here I am trem- 
bling all over. " Sit down ; you will feel better ; we 
trembled too." Slowly I became more quiet. One 
after the other arrived ; many were wounded. We were 
about forty when the sergeants took over the command. 
Nothing was again to be seen of the officers. 

We proceeded and passed several German batteries. 
Many had suffered great losses. The crews were lying 



TO THE MARNE — INTO THE TRAP 87 

dead or wounded around their demolished guns. 
Others again could not fire as they had no more ammu- 
nition. We rested. Some men of the artillery who 
had " nothing to do " for lack of ammunition came up 
to us. A sergeant asked why they did not fire. " Be- 
cause we have used up all our ammunition," a gimner 
replied. " O yes, it would be quite impossible to bring 
up ammunition through that curtain of fire." " It's 
not that," announced the gunner ; " it's because there 
isn't any more that they can't bring it up ! " And 
then he went on : " We started at Neuf chateau to 
drive the French before us like hunted beasts ; we 
rushed headlong after them like savages. Men and 
beasts were used up in the heat ; all the destroyed rail- 
roads and means of transportation could not be re- 
paired in those few days ; everything was left in the con- 
dition we found it ; and in a wild intoxication of victory 
we ventured to penetrate into the heart of France. 
We rushed on without thinking or caring, all the lines 
of communication in our rear were interrupted — we 
confidently marched into the traps the French set for 
us. Before the first ammunition and the other acces- 
sories, which had all to be transported by wagon, have 
reached us we shall be all done for." 

Up to that time we had had blind confidence in the 
invincible strategy of our " Great General Staff," and 
now they told us this. We simply did not believe it. 
And yet it struck us that the French (as was made clear 
by everything around us) were in their own country, 
in the closest proximity of their largest depot, Paris, 
and were in possession of excellent railroad communi- 
cations. The French were, besides, maintaining a ter- 
rible artillery fire with guns of such a large size as had 
never yet been used by them. All that led to the con- 



88 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

elusion that they had taken up positions prepared long 
before, and that the French guns had been placed in 
such a manner that we could not reach them. 

In spite of all we continued to believe that the gun- 
ner had seen things in too dark a light. , We were soon 
to be taught better. 



XII 

AT THE MARNE IN THE MAW OF DEATH 

We got in the neighborhood of the line of defense, 
and were received by a rolling fire from the machine- 
guns. We went up to the improvised trenches that 
were to protect us, at the double-quick. It was rain- 
ing hard. The fields around were covered with dead 
and wounded men who impeded the work of the de- 
fenders. Many of the wounded contracted tetanus in 
consequence of contact with the clayey soil, for most 
of them had not been bandaged. They all begged for 
water and bread, but we had none ourselves. In fact, 
they implored us to give them a bit of bread. They 
had been in that hell for two days without having eaten 
a mouthful. 

We had scarcely been shown our places when the 
French began to attack in mass formation. The occu- 
pants of those trenches, who had already beaten back 
several of those attacks, spurred us on to shoot and 
then began to fire themselves into the on-rushing crowd 
as if demented. Amidst the shouting and the noise one 
could hear the cries of the ofiicers of the infantry: 
" Fire ! Fire ! More lively ! " We fired until the 
barrels of our rifles became quite hot. The enemy 
turned to flee. The heap of victims lying between us 
and our opponents had again been augmented by hun- 
dreds. The attack had been beaten back. 

It was dark, and it rained and rained. From all 

89 



90 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

directions one heard in the darkness the wounded call- 
ing, crying, and moaning. The wounded we had with 
us were likewise moaning and crying. All wanted to 
have their wounds dressed, but we had no more band- 
ages. We tore off pieces of our dirty shirts and 
placed the rags on those sickening wounds. Men were 
dying one after the other. There were no doctors, no 
bandages ; we had nothing whatever. You had to help 
the wounded and keep the French off at the same time. 
It was an unbearable, impossible state of things. It 
rained harder and harder. We were wet to our skins. 
We fired blindly into the darkness. The rolling fire of 
rifles increased, then died away, then increased again. 
We sappers were placed among the infantry. My 
neighbor gave me a dig in the ribs. " I say," he called 
out. 

" What do you want ? " I asked. 

** Who are you? " 

"A sapper." 

" Come here," he hissed. " It gives you an uncanny 
feeling to be alone in this hell of a night. Why are 
you here too.? — They'll soon come again, those over 
there ; then there'll be fine fun again. Do you hear the 
others cry? " 

He laughed. Suddenly he began again : " I al- 
ways shoot at those until they leave off crying — that's 
great fun." 

Again he laughed, that time more shrilly than before. 

I knew what was the matter. He had become in- 
sane. A man passed with ammunition. I begged him 
to go at once and fetch the section leader. The leader, 
a lieutenant of the infantry, came up. I went to meet 
him and told him that my neighbor was continually 
firing at the wounded, was talking nonsense, and was 



AT THE MARNE — IN THE MAW OF DEATH 91 

probably insane. The lieutenant placed himself be- 
tween us. " Can you see anything? " he asked the 
other man. "What? See? No; but I hear them 
moaning and crying, and as soon as I hit one — well, he 
is quiet, he goes to sleep — *' The lieutenant nodded 
at me. He took the gun away from the man. But the 
latter snatched it quickly away again and jumped out 
of the trench. From there he fired into the crowd of 
wounded men until, a few seconds after, he dropped 
down riddled by several bullets. 

The drama had only a few spectators. It was 
scarcely over when it was forgotten again. That was 
no place to become sentimental. We continued shoot- 
ing without any aim. The crying of the wounded be- 
came louder and louder. Why was that so? Those 
wounded men, lying between the two fighting lines, 
were exposed to the aimless fire of both sides. Nobody, 
could help them, for it would have been madness to 
venture between the lines. Louder and more imploring 
became the voices that were calling out, " Stretcher- 
bearer ! Help ! Help ! Water ! " For an answer they 
got at most a curse or a malediction. 

Our trench was filled with water for about a foot — 
water and mud. The dead and wounded lay in that 
mire where they had dropped. We had to make room. 
So we threw the dead out of the trench. At one o'clock 
in the night people came with stretchers and took away 
part of the wounded. But there was no help at all for 
the poor fellows between the lines. 

To fill the cup of misery we received orders, in the 
course of the night, to attack the enemy's lines at 4 :15 
o'clock in the morning. At the time fixed, in a pouring 
rain, we got ready for storming. Received by a terri- 
ble fire from the machine-guns we had to turn back 



92 A GERxMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

half-way. Again we had sacrificed uselessly a great 
number of men. Scarcely had we arranged ourselves 
again in our trench when the French began a new 
attack. They got as far as three yards from our 
trenches when their attack broke down under our fire. 
They, too, had to go back with enormous losses. Three 
times more the French attacked within two hours, each 
time suffering great losses and achieving not the slight- 
est success. 

We did not know what to do. If help did not arrive 
soon it would be impossible for us to maintain our posi- 
tion. We were tormented by hunger and thirst, were 
wet to the skin, and tired enough to drop down. At 
ten o'clock the French attacked a fourth time. They 
came up in immense masses. Our leaders recognized at 
last the danger in which we were and withdrew us. We 
retreated in waves abandoning the wounded and our 
material. By exerting our whole strength we suc- 
ceeded in saving the machine-guns and ammunition. 
We went back a thousand yards and established our- 
selves again in old trenches. The officers called to us 
that we should have to stay there whatever happened ; 
reinforcements would soon come up. The machine-guns 
were in their emplacements in a jiffy. Our opponents, 
who were following us, were immediately treated to a 
hail of bullets. Their advance stopped at once. En- 
couraged by that success we continued firing more 
wildly than ever so that the French were obliged to 
seek cover. The reinforcements we had been promised 
did not arrive. Some 800 yards behind us were six 
German batteries which, however, maintained but a 
feeble fire. 

An officer of the artillery appeared in our midst 
and asked the commander of our section whether it 



AT THE MARNE — IN THE MAW OF DEATH 93 

would not be wise to withdraw the batteries. He said 
he had been informed by telephone that the whole Ger- 
man line was wavering. Before the commander had 
time to answer another attack in mass formation took 
place, the enemy being five or seven times as numerous 
as we were. As if by command, we quitted our position 
without having been told to do so, completely demor- 
alized; we retired in full flight, leaving the six batteries 
(36 guns) to the enemy. Our opponent had ceased 
his curtain of fire fearing to endanger his own advanc- 
ing troops. The Germans used that moment to bring 
into battle reinforcements composed of a medley of all 
arms. Portions of scattered infantry, dismounted 
cavalry, sappers without a lord and master, all had 
been drummed together to fill the ranks. Apparently 
there were no longer any proper complete reserve for- 
mations on that day of battle. 

Again we got the order, " Turn ! Attention ! " 
The unequal fight started again. We observed how the 
enemy made preparations to carry off the captured 
guns. We saw him advance to the assault. He re- 
ceived us with the bayonet. We fought like wild ani- 
mals. For minutes there was bayonet fighting of a 
ferocity that defies description. We stabbed and hit 
like madmen — through the chest, the abdomen, no 
matter where. There was no semblance of regular 
bayonet fighting; that, by the way, can only be prac- 
tised in the barracks yard. The butt-ends of our 
rifles swished through the air. Every skull that came 
in our way was smashed in. We had lost helmets and 
knapsacks. In spite of his great numerical superior- 
ity the enemy could not make headway against our 
little barrier of raving humanity. We forgot all 
around us and fought bleodthirstily without any cal- 



94. A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

culation. A portion of our fellows had broken through 
the ranks of the eneraj, and fought for the possession 
of the guns. 

Our opponent recognized the danger that was threat- 
ening him and retired, seeking with all his might to re- 
tain the captured guns. We did not allow ourselves 
to be shaken off, and bayoneted the retiring foes one 
after the other. But the whole mass of the enemy 
gathered again round the guns. Every gun was sur- 
rounded by corpses, every minute registered numerous 
victims. The artillery who took part in the fight at- 
tempted to remove the breech-blocks of the guns. To 
my right, around the third gun, three Germans were 
still struggling with four Frenchmen; all the others 
were lying on the ground dead or wounded. Near that 
one gun were about seventy dead or wounded men. A 
sapper could be seen before the mouth of the gun. 
With astonishing coolness he was stuffing into the 
mouth of that gun one hand grenade after another. 
He then lit the fuse and ran away. Friends and 
enemies were torn into a thousand shreds by the terrible 
explosion that followed. The gun was entirely de- 
molished. Seventy or eighty men had slaughtered each 
other for nothing — absolutely nothing. 

After a struggle lasting nearly one hour all the guns 
were again in our possession. Who can imagine the 
enormous loss of human lives with which those lost 
guns had been recaptured! The dead and wounded, 
infantry, cavalry, sappers and artillery, together with 
the Frenchmen, hundreds and hundreds of them, were 
covering the narrow space, that comparatively small 
spot which had been the scene of the tragedy. 

We were again reinforced, that time by four regular 
companies of infantry, which had been taken from an- 



AT THE MARNE — IN THE MAW OF DEATH 95 

other section of the battle-field. Though one takes 
part in everything, one's view as an individual is very 
limited, and one has no means of informing oneself 
about the situation in general. Here, too, we found 
ourselves in a similar situation. But those reinforce- 
ments composed of all arms, and the later arrivals, who 
had been taken from a section just as severely threat- 
ened as our own, gave us the presentiment that we 
could only resist further attacks if fresh troops ar- 
rived soon. If only we could get something to quiet the 
pangs of hunger and that atrocious thirst ! 

The horses of the guns now arrived at a mad gallop 
to take away the guns. At the same moment the 
enemy's artillery opened a murderous fire, with all 
sizes of guns, on that column of more than thirty teams 
that were racing along. Confusion arose. The six 
horses of the various teams reared and fled in all di- 
rections, drawing the overturned limbers behind them 
with wheels uppermost. Some of the maddest animals 
ran straight into the hottest fire to be torn to pieces 
together with their drivers. Then our opponent di- 
rected his fire on the battery positions which were also 
our positions. We had no other choice — we had 
either to advance or retire. Retire ? No ! The order 
was different. We were to recapture our lost first 
positions, now occupied by the French, who were now 
probably getting ready for another attack. Had we 
not received fresh food for cannon so that the mad 
dance could begin again? We advanced across a field 
covered with thousands upon thousands of torn and 
bleeding human bodies. 

No shot was fired. Only the enemy's artillery was 
still bombarding the battery positions. We were still 
receiving no fire from the artillery; neither did the 



96 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

enemy's infantry fire upon us. That looted suspicious ; 
we knew what was coming. We advanced farther and 
farther without being molested. Suddenly we found 
ourselves attacked by an army of machine-guns. An 
indescribable hail of bullets was poured into us. We 
threw ourselves to the ground and sought cover as 
well as we could. " Jump forward ! March, march ! " 
Again we ran to meet our fate. We had lost al- 
ready more than a third of our men. We halted again, 
exhausted. Scarcely had we had time to take up a 
position when we were attacked both in front and the 
flank. We had no longer strength enough to withstand 
successfully a simultaneous frontal and flank attack. 
Besides, we were being almost crushed by superior num- 
bers. Our left wing had been completely cut off*, and 
we observed our people on that wing raising their hands 
to indicate that they considered themselves prisoners of 
war. However, the French gave no quarter — exactly 
as we had acted on a former occasion. Not a man of 
our left wing was spared ; every one was cut down. 

We in the center could give them no help. We were 
getting less from minute to minute. " Revenge for 
Sommepy ! " I heard it ringing in my ears. The right 
wing turned, drew us along, and a wild stampede be- 
gan. Our direct retreat being cut off^, we ran back- 
wards across the open field, every one for himself, with 
beating hearts that seemed ready to burst, all the time 
under the enemy's fire. 

After a long run we reached a small village to the 
northeast of Vitry-le-Fran9ois. There we arrived with- 
out rifles, helmets or knapsacks; one after the other. 
But only a small portion could save themselves. The 
French took plenty of booty. All the guns we fought 
for were lost, besides several others. Of the hundreds 



AT THE MARNE — IN THE MAW OF DEATH 97 

of soldiers there remained scarcely one hundred. All 
the others were dead, wounded or missing. Who knew? 
Was that the terrible German war machine? Were 
those the cowardly, degenerated Frenchmen whom we 
had driven before us for days? No; it was war, ter- 
rible, horrid war, in which fortune is fickle. To-day it 
smiles upon you; to-morrow the other feUow's turn 

comes. , 

We sought to form up again in companies. ^ There 
were just twelve men left of our company. Little by 
little more came up from all directions until at last we 
counted twenty. Then every one began to ask ques- 
tions eagerly; every one wanted to know about his 
friend, mate, or acquaintance. Nobody could give an 
answer, for every one of us had been thinking merely 
of himself and of nobody else. Driven by hunger we 
roamed about the place. But our first action was 
drinking water, and that in such quantities as if we 
wanted to drink enough for a lifetime. We found noth- 
ing to eat. Only here and there in a garden we discov- 
ered a few turnips which we swallowed with a ravenous 
appetite without washing or even cleaning them super- 
ficially. 

But where was our company? Nobody knew. We 
were the company, the twenty of us. And the officers? 
"Somewhere," a soldier observed, "somewhere m a 
bomb-proof shelter." WTiat were we to do? We did 
not know. Soon after a sergeant-major of the field 
gendarmes came up sitting proudly on his steed. 
Those " defenders of the Fatherland " have to see to it 
that too many " shirkers " do not « loiter " behind the 
front. "You are sappers, aren't you?" he roared 
out. " What are you doing here? 30th. Regiment? " 
He put a great many questions which we answered as 



98 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

well as we were able to. " Where are the others ? '* 
" Over there," said a young Berliner, and pointed to 
the battle-field, " dead or prisoners ; maybe some have 
saved themselves and are elsewhere ! " " It doesn't 
matter," roared out our fierce sergeant-major for whom 
the conversation began to become unpleasant. " Wait 
till I come back." " Where are the officers.? " Again 
nobody could answer him. " What are their names ? 
I daresay I shall find them. Maybe they are at 
Vitry ? " We gave him their names — Captain Menke, 
First Lieutenant Maier, Lieutenants of the Reserves 
Spahn, Neesen and Heimbach. He gave us a certificate 
with which to prove the purpose of our " loitering " 
to other overseers and disappeared. " Let's hope the 
horse stumbles and the fellow breaks his neck." That 
was our pious wish which one of our chaps sent after 
him. 

We went into one of the houses that had been pillaged 
like all the rest, lay down on mattresses that were lying 
about the rooms and slept — slept like dormice. 



XIII 

THE ROUT OF THE MARNE 

None of us knew how long we had slept; we only 
knew that it was night. Some men of our company 
had waked us up. They had been looking for us for 
a long time. " Come along," they said ; " the old man 
is outside and making a hell of a row. He has got 
seventeen men together and is swearing like a trooper 
because he can't find you." Drowsily and completely 
bereft of any will-power of our own we trudged after 
them. We knew we were again being sent forward. 
But we did not care; we had lost all balance. Never 
before had I noticed such indifference on our part as on 
that night. 

There the old man was standing. He saw us coming 
up, without headgear, the uniforms all torn to tatters, 
and minus our knapsacks. He received us with the 
greeting, " Where have you been, you boobies? " No- 
body answered. What did we care? Things could not 
get any worse than they were. Though all of us re- 
sented the wrong done to us we all remained silent. 

"Where is your equipment? — Lost? — Lost? 

That's a fine story. You rag-tag miserable vagabonds. 

If they were all like you — " For a while he went on in 

that style. That pretty fellow had suffered the 

" miserable vagabonds " to go forward while he himself 

had been defending his " Fatherland " at Vitry, three 

or four miles behind the front. We picked out the best 

99 



100 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

from among the rifles that were lying about, and- soon 
we were again " ready for battle." 

We were standing half-asleep, leaning on the barrel 
of our rifles and waiting to be led forth again to* 
slaughter, when a shot was fired right in our midst. 
The bullet had shattered the entire right hand of a 
" spoiled ensign," as the officers express themselves. 
His hand was bandaged. " How did that happen ? " 
asked the officers. An eyewitness related the incident 
saying : " Like all of us he put his hand on the 
mouth of the barrel when it happened; I did not see 
any more." " Had he secured the gun ? Don't you 
know that it is forbidden to lean with your hand on the 
mouth of your rifle and that you have been ordered to 
secure your rifle when it is loaded ? " Then turning 
to the " spoiled ensign," who was writhing with pain, 
he bawled at him : " I shall report you for punishment 
on account of gross negligence and self-mutilation on 
the battle-field!" 

We all knew what was the matter. The ensign was 
a sergeant, but a poor devil. He was fully aware that 
he had no career before him. We soldiers liked him 
because we knew that military life disgusted him. 
Though he was a sergeant he chose his companions 
solely among the common soldiers. We would have di- 
vided with him our last crust of bread, because to us 
especially, he behaved like a fellow-man. We also knew 
how harshly he was treated by his superiors, and won- 
dered that the " accident " had not happened before. 
I do not know whether he was placed before a court- 
martial later on. Punishments for self-mutilation are 
the order of the day, and innumerable men are being 
severely punished. Now and then the verdicts are made 
known to the soldiers at the front to serve as a deter- 



THE ROUT OF THE MARNE 101 

rent. The people at home, however, will get to hear 
very little of them. 

The captain passed on the command to an officer's 
representative, and then the old man disappeared again 
in the direction of Vitry. He spurred on his steed, and 
away he flew. One of the soldiers thought that the 
captain's horse was a thousand times better off than we 
were. We knew it. We knew that we were far below 
the beast and were being treated accordingly. 

We marched off and halted at the northwestern exit 
of the village. There we met sappers gathered from 
other companies and battalions, and our company was 
brought up to 85 men. The officer's representative 
then explained to us that we should not be led into the 
firing line that day; our only task was to watch that 
German troops fighting on the other side of the Mame 
should find the existing temporary bridges in order in 
case they had to retreat. We marched to the place 
where the Saulx enters the Marne. 

So we marched off and reached our destination 
towards six o'clock in the morning. The dead were 
lying in heaps around us in every field; death had 
gathered in a terrible harvest. We were lying on a 
wooded height on our side of the Marne, and were able 
to overlook the country for many miles in front of us. 
One could see the explosions of the shells that were 
raining down by the thousand. Little, almost nothing 
v/as to be seen of the men, and yet there were thousands 
in front of us who were fighting a desperate battle. 
Little by little we could make out the faint outline of 
the struggle. The Germans were about a mile and a 
half behind the Marne in front of us. Near the banks 
of the Marne large bodies of German cavalry were sta- 
tioned. There were only two tumble-down bridges con- 
structed of make-shift materials. They stood ready to 



102 A GERMAN DESERTER^S WAR EXPERIENCE 

be blown up, and had plenty of explosive matter 
(dynamite) attached to them. The electrical priming 
wires led to our position; we were in charge of the 
firing apparatus. Connected by telephone we were 
able to blow up the bridges in an instant. 

On the other side things began to get lively. We 
saw the French at various places pressing forward 
and flowing back again. The rifle fire increased con- 
tinually in violence, and the attacks became more fre- 
quent. Two hours passed in that way. We saw the 
French bringing up reinforcement after reinforcement, 
in spite of the German artillery which was maintaining 
but a feeble fire. After a long pause the enemy began 
to attack again. The French came up in several lines. 
They attacked several times, and each time they had to 
go back again; each time they suffered great losses. 
At about three o'clock in the afternoon our troops at- 
tacked by the enemy with all his strength, began to give 
ground, slowly at first, then in a sort of flight. Our 
exhausted men could no longer withstand the blow dealt 
with enormous force. In a wild stampede all of them 
tried at the same time to reach safety across the 
bridges. The cavalry, too, who were in cover near the 
banks of the river, rushed madly to the bridges. An 
enormous crowd of men and beasts got wedged before 
the bridges. In a trice the bridge before us was 
thickly covered with human beings all of whom were 
trying to reach the opposite side in a mad rush. We 
thought we could notice the temporary bridge sway 
under its enormous burden. Like ourselves the officer's 
representative could overlook the whole country. He 
pressed the receiver of the telephone convulsively to his 
left ear, his right hand being on the firing apparatus 
after which another man was looking. With bated 



THE ROUT OF THE MARNE 103 

breath he gazed fixedly into the fleeing crowds. " Let's 
hope the telephone is in order," he said to himself at 
intervals. He knew as well as we did that he had to 
act as soon as the sharp order was transmitted by tele- 
phone. It was not much he had to do. Directed by 
a movement of the hand the man in charge of the ap- 
paratus would turn a key that looked like a winged 
screw — and all would be over. 

The crowds were still rushing across the bridge, but 
nearly half of our men, almost the whole of the cavalry, 
were still on the other side. The bridge farther up 
was not being used so much and nearly all had reached 
safety in that portion of the battlefield. We observed 
the foremost French cross that bridge, but the bridge 
remained intact. The sergeant-major who was in 
charge of the other apparatus was perplexed as he re- 
ceived no order; so he blew up that bridge on his own 
responsibility sending hundreds of Frenchmen to their 
watery grave in the river Marne. 

At the same moment the officer's representative next 
to me received the command to blow up the second and 
last bridge. He was confused and hesitated to pass 
on the order. He saw that a great crowd of Germans 
were still on the other side, he saw the struggles of 
that mass of men in which every one was trynig to be 
the first one to reach the bridge and safety beyond. A 
terrible panic ensued. Many soldiers threw themselves 
into the river and tried to swim across. The mass of 
soldiers on the other side, still numbering several thou- 
sands, were pressed harder and harder; the telephone 
messages were becoming ever more urgent. All at once 
the officer's representative jumped up, pushed aside the 
sapper in charge of the apparatus, and in the next sec- 
ond a mighty explosion was heard. Bridge and men 



104 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

were blown into the air for hundreds of yards. Like 
a river at times of inundations the Marne was carrying 
away wood and men, tattered uniforms and horses. 
Swimming across it was of no earthly use, and yet sol- 
diers kept throwing themselves into the river. 

On the other side the French began to disarm com- 
pletely the German soldiers who could be seen standing 
there with hands uplifted. Thousands of prisoners, 
innumerable horses and machine guns had fallen into 
the hands of the enemy. Some of us were just going to 
return with the firing apparatus which was now super- 
fluous when we heard the tale of the significance of the 
incident, confirming the suspicions of many a one 
amongst us. An error had been committed, that could 
not be undone! When the bridge higher up, that was 
being used to a smaller degree by the soldiers, had been 
crossed by the German troops and the enemy had im- 
mediately begun his pursuit, the staff of officers in com- 
mand at that passage intended to let a certain number 
of enemies cross the bridge, i.e., a number that could 
not be dangerous to the German troops who were in 
temporary safety. Those hasty troops of the enemy 
could not have received any assistance after the bridge 
had been blown up, and would have been annihilated or 
taken prisoners. For that reason it was intended to 
postpone the blowing up of the bridge. 

However, the sergeant-major in charge of the firing 
apparatus imagined, as his thoughts kept whirling 
through his head, that the telephone wires must have 
been destroyed, and blew up on his own initiative the 
bridge that was densely crowded with Frenchmen, be- 
fore our opponent succeeded in interrupting the wires. 
But at the same time the officer's representative in 
charge of the firing apparatus of the second bridge 



THE ROUT OF THE MARNE 105 

received an order, the words of which (as he later him- 
self confessed) were not at all clear to him, threw aside 
the receiver, lost the absolutely necessary assurance, 
killed all the people on the bridge, and delivered hun- 
dreds upon hundreds into the hands of the enemy. 

We had no time to gather any more detailed impres- 
sions, for we received the order that all the men of our 
company were to gather at Vitry before the cathedral. 
We began to sling our hook with a sigh of relief, that 
time a little more quickly than ordinarily, for the 
enemy's artillery was already beginning to sweep the 
country systematically. We heard from wounded men 
of other sections, whom we met on the way, that the 
French had crossed the Marne already at various 
places. We discussed the situation among us, and 
found that we were all of the same opinion. Even on 
Belgian territory we had suffered heavy losses ; every 
day had demanded its victims ; our ranks had become 
thinner and thinner ; many companies had been used up 
entirely and, generally speaking, all companies had suf- 
fered severely. These companies, furnished and re- 
duced to a minimum strength, now found themselves 
opposed to an enemy excellently provided with all neces- 
saries. Our opponent was continually bringing up 
fresh troops, and we were becoming fewer every hour. 
We began to see that it was impossible for us to make a 
stand at that place. Soldiers of the various arms con- 
firmed again and again that things were looking just 
as bad with them as with us, that the losses in men and 
material were truly enormous. I found myself thinking 
of the " God of the Germans." Had He cast them 
aside? I " thought " it so loudly that the others could 
hear me. " Well," one of them remarked, " whom God 
wants to punish He first strikes with blindness. Per- 



106 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

haps He thought of Belgium, of Drucharz, of Sommepy, 
of Suippes, and of so many other things, and suffered 
us to rush into this ruin in our blind rage." 

We reached Vitry. There the general misery seemed 
to us to be greater than outside. There was not a 
single house in the whole town that was not overcrowded 
with wounded men. Amidst all that misery pillaging 
had not been forgotten. To make room for the 
wounded all the warehouses had been cleared and 
their contents thrown into the streets. The soldiers of 
the ambulance corps walked about, and everything that 
was of value and that pleased them they annexed. 
But the worst " hyenas " of the battle-field are to be 
found in the ammunition and transport trains. The 
men of these two branches of the army have sufficient 
room in their wagons to store things away. The as- 
sertion is, moreover, proved by the innumerable confis- 
cations, by the German Imperial Post Office, of soldiers' 
parcels, all of them containing gold rings, chains, 
watches, precious stones, etc. The cases discovered in 
that or any other way are closely gone into and the 
criminals are severely punished, but it is well known 
that only a small percentage of the crimes see the light 
of day. What are a thousand convictions or so for a 
hundred thousand crimes ! 

In Vitry the marauders' business was again flourish- 
ing. The soldiers of the transport trains, above all, 
are in no direct danger in war. Compared with the 
soldiers fighting at the front it is easy for them to 
find food; besides, it is they who transport the pro- 
visions of the troops. They know that their lives are 
not endangered directly and that they have every 
reason to suppose that they will return unscathed. To 
them war is a business, because they largely take pos- 



THE ROUT OF THE MARNE 107 

session of all that is of any value. We could therefore 
comprehend that they were enthusiastic patriots and 
said quite frankly that they hoped the war would con- 
tinue for years. Later on we knew what had happened 
when the Emperor had made one of his " rousing " 
speeches somewhere in the west and had found the 
" troops " in an " excellent " mood and " full of fight." 
Among that sort of troops there were besides the trans- 
port soldiers numerous cavalry distributed among the 
various divisions, army corps staffs, and general staffs. 



XIV 

THE FLIGHT FROM THE MARNE 

We soon reached the cathedral and reported to Lieu- 
tenant Spahn whom we found there. He, too, had de- 
fended his " Fatherland " in that town. Clean shaven 
and faultlessly dressed, he showed up to great advan- 
tage contrasted with us. There we stood in ragged, 
dirty, blood-stained uniforms, our hair disheveled, with 
a growing beard covered with clay and mud. We were 
to wait. That was all. We sat down and gazed at 
the misery around us. The church was filled with 
wounded men. Many died in the hands of the medi- 
cal men. The dead were carried out to make room 
for others. The bodies were taken to one side where 
whole rows of them were lying already. We took the 
trouble to count the dead, who had been mostly placed 
in straight rows, and counted more than sixty. Some 
of them were in uniforms that were still quite good, 
whilst our uniforms were nothing but rags hanging from 
our backs. There were some sappers among them, but 
their coats were not any better than our own. 

" Let us take some infantry coats," somebody ven- 
tured; "what's the difference? A coat is a coat." 
So we went and took the coats from several bodies and 
tried them on. Taking off their clothes was no easy 
job, for the corpses were already rigid like a piece of 
wood. But what was to be done? We could not run 
about in our shirt-sleeves ! All did not find something 

108 



THE FLIGHT FROM THE MARNE 109 

to fit them, and the disappointed ones had to wait for 
another chance to turn up. We also needed boots, of 
course ; but the corpses lying before our eyes had boots 
on that were not much better than our own. The3'^ had 
worn theirs as long as we had worn ours, but we thought 
we might just inspect them all the same. We looked 
and found a pair of fairly good ones. They were very 
small, but we guessed they might fit one or the other 
amongst us. Two of us tried to remove them. " But 
they are a tight fit," one of the two remarked. Two 
more came up to help. Two were holding the leg of 
the dead man while the two others tugged at the boot. 
It was of no use ; the leg and the foot were so rigid 
that it was found impossible to get the boot off. " Let 
it go," one of those holding the leg remarked, " you 
will sooner pull off his leg than remove that boot." 
We let go just as the doctor passed. " What are you 
doing there?" he asked us. "We want to get some 
boots." " Then you will have to cut them open ; 
don't waste your time, the rigid leg will not release the 
boot." He passed on. The situation was not com- 
plete without a brutal joke. An infantryman standing 
near said, pointing to the dead, " Now you know it ; 
let them keep their old boots, they don't want to walk on 
their bare feet." The joke was laughed at. And why 
not.f* Here we were out of danger. What were the 
others to us? We were still alive and those lying there 
could hear no longer. We saw no other things in war, 
and better things we had not been taught. 

It is true that on the way we had got some bread 
by begging for it, but we were still quite hungry. Noth- 
ing was to be seen of our field kitchen. The crew of our 
field kitchen and the foraging officer and sergeant al- 
ways preferred to defend their Fatherland several tens 



110 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

of miles behind the front. What were others to them? 
What were we to them? As long as they did not need 
to go within firing range of the artillery they were 
content. Comradeship ceases where the field kitchen 
begins. 

There were, however, some field kitchens belonging to 
other parts of the army. They had prepared meals, 
but could not get rid of the food; even if their com- 
pany, i.e., the rest of their company, should have ar- 
rived they would have had far too much food. Many 
a one for whom they had prepared a meal was no 
longer in need of one. Thus we were most willingly 
given as much to eat as we wanted. We had scarcely 
finished eating when we had to form up again. Gradu- 
ally several men of our company had come together. 
We lined up in a manner one is used to in war. The 
" old man " arrived. One of the officers reported the 
company to him, but evidently did not report the num- 
ber of the missing. Perhaps the old man did not care, 
for he did not even ask whether we knew anything about 
the one or the other. He stepped in front of the com- 
pany and said (a sign of his good temper), "Good 
morning, men!" (It was seven o'clock in the eve- 
ning!) As an answer he got a grunting noise such 
as is sometimes made by a certain animal, and a sneer- 
ing grin. Without much ado we were ordered to go 
to the tool wagons which were standing near the north- 
em exit of the town, and provide ourselves with rifle 
ammunition and three hand grenades each. " At half 
past nine to-night you have to line up here; each man 
must have 500 cartridges, three hand grenades, and 
fuses for igniting them ; step aside ! " 

On our way to the implement wagons we noticed that 
everywhere soldiers that had lost their companies were 



THE FLIGHT FROM THE MARNE lU 

being drawn together and that new formations were 
being gotten together with the greatest speed. We 
felt that something was in the air, but could not tell 
what it might be. The rain had started again and 
was coming down in torrents. When we were at the 
appointed place at half past nine in the evening we 
saw all the principal streets filled with troops, all of 
them in storming outfit like ourselves. A storming 
outfit consists of a suit made of cloth, a cap, light 
marching baggage, tent canvas, cooking utensils, tent- 
pegs, the iron ration, and, in the case of sappers, trench 
tools also. During the day we got our " Klamotten," 
i.e., our equipment together again. We were standing 
in the rain and waited. We did not yet know what 
was going to happen. Then we were ordered to take 
off the lock of our rifles and put them in our bread 
bags. The rifles could not now be used for shooting. 
We began to feel what was coming, viz., a night at- 
tack with bayonets and hand grenades. So as not to 
shoot each other in the dark we had to remove the lock 
from the rifle. We stood there till about 11 o'clock 
when we were suddenly ordered to camp. We did not 
know what the whole thing meant, and were especially 
puzzled by the last order which was, however, welcomed 
by all of us. We judged from the rolling thunder that 
the battle had not yet decreased in violence, and the 
sky was everywhere red from the burning villages and 
farm houses. 

Returning " home " we gathered from the conversa- 
tion the officers had among themselves that a last at- 
tempt was to be made to repel the French; that ex- 
plained the night assault the order for which had now 
been canceled. They had evidently made, or been 
obliged to make another resolution at the general staff ; 



112 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

perhaps they had recognized that no more could be 
done and had rescinded the order for the attack and 
decided upon a retreat, which began the next morning 
at 6 o'clock. We, however, had no idea that it should 
be our last night at Vitry. 

We lodged in a shanty for the night. Being suffi- 
ciently tired we were soon in a deep slumber. We had 
to rise at four o'clock in the morning. Each of us re- 
ceived a loaf of bread ; we filled our water bottles, and 
marched off. Whither we were marching we were not 
told, but we guessed it. The remaining population of 
Vitry, too, seemed to be informed ; some were lining the 
streets, and their glances were eloquent. Everywhere 
a feverish activity was to be obsei^ved. We halted out- 
side the town. The captain called us to gather round 
him and addressed us as follows : " Our troops will 
evacuate their positions on account of the difficult ter- 
rain, and retire to those heights where they will take 
up new positions." In saying that he turned round and 
pointed to a ridge near the horizon. He continued: 
" There we shall settle down and expect the enemy. 
New reinforcements will arrive there to-day, and some 
days hence you will be able to send a picture postcard 
home from Paris." I must avow that the majority of 
us believed that humbug at the time. Other portions 
of the army were already arriving from all directions. 
We had been marching for some hours when we heard 
that Vitry had already been occupied again by the 
French and that all the material stored at Vitry, to- 
gether with all the hospitals, doctors and men, and 
whole companies of the medical service had been taken 
there. 

Towards two o'clock in the afternoon we reached the 
heights the captain had shown us, but he had evidently 



THE FLIGHT FROM THE MARNE 113 

forgotten everything, for we marched on and on. Even 
the most stupid amongst us now began to fear that we 
had been humbugged. The streets became ever more 
densely crowded with retreating troops and trains ; 
from all sides they came and wanted to use the main road 
that was also being used by us, and the consequence was 
that the road became too congested and that we were 
continually pushed more to the rear. Munition wagons 
raced past us, singly, without any organization. Or- 
der was no longer observed. Canteen and baggage 
wagons went past, and here already a wild confusion 
arose. Every moment there was a stop and all got 
wedged. Many would not wait, and some wagons 
were driven by the side of the road, through fields turned 
sodden by the rain, in an attempt to get along. One 
wagon would be overturned, another one would stick in 
the mud. No great trouble was taken to recover the 
vehicles, the horses were taken out and the wagon was 
left. The drivers took the horses and tried to get 
along ; every one was intent upon finding safety. Thus 
one incident followed upon another. 

An officer came riding up and delivered an order to 
our captain. We did not know what it was. But we 
halted and stepped into the field. Having stacked our 
rifles we were allowed to lie down. We lay down by the 
side of the road and gazed at the columns, field kitchens, 
transports, medical trains, field post wagons, all filing 
past us in picturesque confusion. Wounded men were 
lying or sitting on all the vehicles. Their faces showed 
that riding on those heavy wagons caused them pain. 
But they, too, wanted to get along at any price for they 
knew from personal experience what it meant to fall 
into the hands of an uncompromising enemy. They 
would perhaps be considered as little as they and we 



114 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

ourselves had formerly considered the wounded French- 
men left in our hands. Because they knew this, as 
all of us did, they did not want to be left behind for 
anything in the world. 

We had as yet not the slightest idea what we were to 
do. Night came upon us, and it poured again in tor- 
rents. We lay on the ground and felt very cold. Our 
tired bodies no longer gave out any heat. Yet we stayed 
on the ground too tired to move. Sections of artillery 
now began to arrive, but most of the batteries had no 
longer their full number (6) of guns. One had lost 
three, another two ; many guns even arriving singly. 
Quite a number of limbers, some 50 or so, passed with- 
out guns. Those batteries had only been able to save 
the horses and had been obliged to leave the guns in the 
hands of the French. Others had only two or four 
horses instead of six. 

Presently some fifteen motorcars, fine solid cars, came 
along. We gazed in astonishment at the strong, ele- 
gant vehicles. " Ah ! " my neighbors exclaimed, " the 
General Staff ! " Duke Albrecht of Wurttemberg and 
his faithful retainers ! We were getting rebellious 
again. Every one felt wild, and it rained curses. One 
man said, " After having sent thousands to their doom 
they are now making off in motorcars." We were lying 
in the swamp, and nobody noticed us. The automobiles 
raced past and soon left all behind them. We were 
still quite in the dark as to our purpose in that place. 
We lay there for hours, till ten o'clock at night. The 
troops were surging back largely in dissolved forma- 
tions. Machine-gun sections arrived with empty 
wagons ; they had lost all their guns. In the west we 
heard the thunder of guns coming nearer and nearer. 



THE FLIGHT FROM THE MARNE 115 

We did not know whether we were going to be sent into 
battle again or not. 

The confusion in the road became worse and worse 
and degenerated in the darkness into a panic. Refu- 
gees, who were wandering about with women and chil- 
dren in that dark night and in the pouring rain, got 
under the wheels of wagons ; wounded men in flight were 
likewise crushed by the wheels; and cries for help came 
from everywhere out of the darkness. The streets were 
badly worn. Abandoned vehicles were lining the sides 
of the road. We began to move at three o'clock in the 
morning, and before we were fully aware of what was 
happening we found ourselves with the rear-guard. 
Regiments of infantry, shot to pieces, arrived in a piti- 
ful condition. They had cast away their knapsacks 
and all unnecessary impediments, and were trying to get 
along as fast as possible. Soon after, the first shrap- 
nel of the enemy began to burst above our heads, which 
caused us to accelerate our march continually. The 
road, which had also been used during the advance, was 
still marked by deep shell holes that were filled with 
water to the very edge, for it rained without interrup- 
tion. It was pitch-dark, and every now and then some- 
body would fall into one of those shell holes. We were 
all wet through, but continued to press on. Some would 
stumble over something in the dark, but nobody paid 
any attention. The great thing was to get along. 
Dead horses and men lay in the middle of the road, but 
nobody took the trouble to remove the " obstacle." 

It was almost light when we reached a small village 
and halted. The whole place was at once occupied and 
put in a state of defense as well as was possible. We 
took up positions behind the walls of the cemetery. 



116 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

Other troops arrived incessantly, but all in disorder, in 
a wild confused jumble. Cavalry and artillery also ar- 
rived together with a machine-gun section. These, how- 
ever, had kept their formations intact; there was some 
disorder, but no sign of panic. One could see that they 
had suffered considerable losses though their casualties 
had not been as heavy as ours. The enemy was bom- 
barding us with his guns in an increasing degree, but 
his fire had no effect. Some houses had been hit and 
set alight by shells. Far away from us hostile cavalry 
patrols showed themselves, but disappeared again. 
Everything was quiet. Ten minutes afterwards things 
in front of us began to get lively ; we saw whole columns 
of the enemy approach. Without firing a shot we 
turned and retired farther back. Mounted artillery 
were stationed behind the village and were firing already 
into the advancing enemy. A cavalry patrol came gal- 
loping across the open field, their horses being covered 
with foam. We heard the leader of the patrol, an of- 
ficer, call out in passing to a cavalry officer that strong 
forces of the enemy were coming on by all the roads. 
We left the village behind us and sought to get along as 
quickly as possible. We had no idea where we were. 
The cavalry and artillery sections that had been left 
behind were keeping the enemy under fire. Towards 
noon shrapnel was again exploding above our heads, 
but the projectiles were bursting too high up in the air 
to do any damage to us. Yet it was a serious warning 
to us, for it gave us to understand that the enemy was 
keeping close on our heels — a sufficient reason to con- 
vert our retreat into a flight. We therefore tried to 
get away as fast as our tired out bones would let us. 
We knew there was no chance of a rest to-day. So we 
hurried on in the drenching rain. 



THE FLIGHT FROM THE MARNE 117 

The number of those who dropped by the way from 
exhaustion became larger and larger. They belonged 
to various portions of the army. We could not help 
them, and there were no more w agons ; these were more 
in front. Those unfortunate men, some of whom were 
unconscious, were left behind just as the exhausted 
horses. Those that had sufficient strength left crawled 
to the side of the road; but the unconscious ones re- 
mained where they fell, exposed to the hoofs of the 
horses and the wheels of the following last detachments. 
If they were lucky enough not to be crushed to atoms 
they fell into the hands of the enemy. Perhaps those 
who found our men were men and acted accordingly, but 
if they were soldiers brutalized by war, patriots filled 
with hatred, as could also be found in our own ranks, 
then the " boche " (as the French say) had to die a 
miserable death by the road, die for his " Fatherland." 
To our shame, be it said, we knew it from our own ex- 
perience, and summoned all our energy so as not to be 
left behind. I was thinking of the soldier of the For- 
eign Legion lying in the desert sand, left behind by his 
troop and awaiting the hungry hyenas. 

The road was covered with the equipment the soldiers 
had thrown away. We, too, had long ago cast aside 
all unnecessary ballast. Thus we were marching, when 
we passed a wood densely packed with refugees. Those 
hunted people had stretched blankets between the trees 
so as to protect themselves from the rain. There they 
were lying in the greatest conceivable misery, all in 
a jumble, women and men, children and graybeards. 
Their camp reached as far as the road, and one could 
observe that the terrible hours they had lived through 
had left deep furrows in their faces. They looked at 
us with weary, tired eyes. The children begged us to 



118 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

give them some bread, but we had nothing whatsoever 
left and were ourselves tormented by hunger. The ene- 
my's shrapnel was still accompanying us, and we had 
scarcely left the wood when shrapnel began to explode 
there, which caused the refugees, now exposed to the 
fire, to crowd into the fields in an attempt to reach 
safety. Many of them joined us, but before long they 
were forbidden to use the road because they impeded 
the retreat of the troops. Thus all of them were driven 
without pity into the fields soaked by the rain. 

When we came to a pillaged village towards the eve- 
ning we were at last granted a short rest, for in conse- 
quence of our quick marching we had disengaged our- 
selves almost completely from the enemy. We heard 
the noise of the rear-guard actions at a considerable 
distance behind us, and we wished that they would last 
a long time, for then we could rest for a longer period. 
From that village the head man and two citizens were 
carried off by the Germans, the three being escorted 
by cavalry. We were not told why those people were 
being taken along, but each place had to furnish such 
" hostages," whole troops of whom were being marched 
off. The remaining cattle had also been taken along; 
troopers were driving along the cattle in large droves. 
We were part of the rear-guard. It is therefore easy 
to understand why we found no more eatables. Hunger 
began to plague us more and more. Not a mouthful 
was to be had in the village we had reached, and with- 
out having had any food we moved on again after half 
an hour's rest. 

We had marched two miles or so when we came upon 
a former camping place. Advancing German troops 
had camped there about a week ago. The bread that 
had evidently been plentiful at that time now lay scat- 



THE FLIGHT FROM THE MARNE 119 

tered in the field. Though the bread had been lying 
in the open for about a week and had been exposed to a 
rain lasting for days, we picked it up and swallowed it 
ravenously. As long as those pangs of hunger could 
be silenced, it mattered little what it was that one 
crammed into one's stomach. 



XV 

AT THE END OF THE FLIGHT 

Night fell again, and there was still no prospect of 
sleep and recuperation. We had no idea of how far 
we had to retire. Altogether we knew very little of 
how things were going. We saw by the strange sur- 
roundings that we were not using the same road on 
which we had marched before to the Marne as " victors." 
" Before ! " It seemed to us as if there was an eternity 
between that " before " and the present time, for many 
a one who was with us then was now no longer among us. 

One kept thinking and thinking, one hour chased the 
other. Involuntarily one was drawn along. We slept 
whilst walking. Our boots were literally filled with 
water. Complaining was of no use. We had to keep 
on marching. Another night passed. Next morning 
troops belonging to the main army were distributed 
among the rear-guard. In long columns they were ly- 
ing by the side of the road to let us pass in order to 
join up behind. We breathed a sigh of relief, for now 
we were no longer exposed to the enemy's artillery fire. 
After a march of some five hours we halted and were 
lucky enough to find ourselves close to a company of 
infantry that had happily saved its field kitchen. 

After the infantrymen had eaten we were given the 

rest, about a pint of bean soup each. Some sappers 

of our company were still among that section of the 

120 



AT THE END OF THE FLIGHT 121 

infantry. They had not been able to find us and had 
joined the infantry. We thought they were dead or 
had been taken prisoners, but they had only been scat- 
tered and had lost their way. We had hopes to recover 
still many a one of our missing comrades in a similar 
manner, but we found only a few more afterwards. In 
the evening of the same day we saw another fellow of 
our company sitting on the limber of the artillery. 
When he saw us he joined us immediately and told us 
what had happened to him. The section he belonged 
to had its retreat across the Marne cut off; nearly all 
had been made prisoners already and the French were 
about to disarm them when he fled and was lucky enough 
to reach the other side of the Marne by swimming 
across the river. He, too, could not or did not want 
to find our company, and joined the artillery so as not 
to be forced to walk, so he explained. Our opinion was 
that he would have done better by remaining a prisoner, 
for in that case the murdering business would have 
ended as far as he was concerned. We told him so, and 
he agreed with us. " However," he observed, " is it 
sure that the French would have spared us? I know 
how we ourselves acted ; and if they had cut us down 
remorselessly we should now be dead. Who could have 
known it ? " I knew him too well not to be aware that 
he for one had every reason to expect from the enemy 
what he had often done in his moments of bloodthirst ; 
when he was the " victor " he knew neither humanity 
nor pity. 

It was not yet quite dark when we reached a large 
village. We were to find quarters there and rest as 
long as was possible. But we knew well enough that we 
should be able to rest only for as long as the rear- 
guard could keep the enemy back. Our quarters were 



122 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

in the public school, and on account of the lack of food 
we were allowed to consume our iron rations. Of course, 
we had long ago lost or eaten that can of meat and the 
little bag of biscuits. We therefore lay down with 
rumbling stomachs. 

Already at 11 o'clock in the night alarm was 
sounded. In the greatest hurry we had to get ready 
to march off, and started at once. The night was 
pitch-dark, and it was still raining steadily. The of- 
ficers kept on urging us to hurry up, and the firing of 
rifles told us that the enemy was again close at our 
heels. At day-break we passed the town of St. Mene- 
hould which was completely intact. Here we turned to 
the east, still stubbornly pursued by the French, and 
reached Clermont-en-Argonne at noon. Again we got 
some hours of rest, but in the evening we had to move 
on again all night long in a veritable forced march. 
We felt more tired from hour to hour, but there was 
no stopping. 

The rain had stopped when we left the road at ten 
o'clock in the morning and we were ordered to occupy 
positions. We breathed again freely, for that exhaust- 
ing retreat lasting for days had reduced us to a con- 
dition that was no longer bearable. So we began to 
dig ourselves in. We had not half finished digging our 
trenches when a hail of artillery projectiles was poured 
on lis. Fortunately we lost but few men, but it was 
impossible to remain any longer, and we were immedi- 
ately ordered to retreat. We marched on over country 
roads, and it was dark when we began to dig in again. 
We were in the neighborhood of Challerange quite near 
the village of Cerney-en-Dormois. It was very dark 
and a thick mist surrounded us. We soldiers had no 
knowledge of the whereabouts of the enemy. As quickly 



AT THE END OF THE FLIGHT 123 

as possible we tried to deepen our trench, avoiding 
every unnecessary noise. Now and then we heard se- 
cret patrols of the enemy approach, only to disappear 
again immediately. 

It was there we got our first reinforcements. They 
came up in the dark in long rows, all of them fresh 
troops and mostly men of the landwehr, large numbers 
of whom were still in blue uniforms. By their uniforms 
and equipment one could see that the men had been 
equipped and sent off in great haste. They had not 
yet heard the whistle of a bullet, and were anxiously 
inquiring whether the place was dangerous. They 
brought up numerous machine-guns and in a jiffy we 
had prepared everything for the defense. 

We could not get to know where the French were 
supposed to be. The officers only told us to keep in 
our places. Our trench was thickly crowded with men, 
and provided with numerous machine-guns. We in- 
structed the new arrivals in the way they would have 
to behave if an attack should be made, and told them 
to keep quite still and cool during the attack and aim 
accurately. 

They were mostly married men that had been dragged 
from their occupations and had been landed right in 
our midst without understanding clearly what was hap- 
pening to them. They had no idea where, in what part 
of the country they were, and they overwhelmed us 
with all sorts of questions. They were not acquainted 
with the handling of the new 98-rifle. They were pro- 
vided with a remodeled rifle of the 88 pattern for which 
our ammunition could be used. Though no shots were 
fired the " new ones " anxiously avoided putting their 
heads above the edge of the trench. They provided us 
liberally with eatables and cigars. 



124. A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

It was getting light, and as yet we had not seen much 
of the enemy. Slowly the mist began to disappear, and 
now we observed the French occupying positions some 
hundred yards in front of us. They had made them- 
selves new positions during the night exactly as we had 
done. Immediately firing became lively on both sides. 
Our opponent left his trench and attempted an attack, 
but our great mass of machine-guns literally mowed 
down his ranks. An infernal firing had set in, and the 
attack was beaten off after only a few steps had been 
made by the opposing troops. The French renewed 
their attack again and again, and when at noon we 
had beaten back eight assaults of that kind hundreds 
upon hundreds of dead Frenchmen were covering the 
ground between our trenches and theirs. The enemy 
had come to the conclusion that it was impossible to 
break down our iron wall and stopped his attacks. 

At that time we had no idea that this was to be the 
beginning of a murderous exhausting war of position, 
the beginning of a slow, systematic, and useless slaugh- 
ter. For months and months we were to fight on in 
the same trench, without gaining or losing ground, sent 
forward again and again to murder like raving beasts 
and driven back again. Perhaps it was well that we 
did not know at that time that hundreds of thousands 
of men were to lose their lives in that senseless slaughter. 

The wounded men between the trenches had to perish 
miserably. Nobody dared help them as the opposing 
side kept up their fire. They perished slowly, quite 
slowly. Their cries died away after long hours, one 
after the other. One man after the other had lain down 
to sleep, never to awake again. Some we could hear for 
days ; night and day they begged and implored one to 
assist them, but nobody could help. Their cries be- 



AT THE END OF THE FLIGHT 125 

came softer and softer until at last they died away — 
all suffering had ceased. There was no possibility of 
burying the dead. They remained where they fell for 
weeks. The bodies began to decompose and spread 
pestilential stenches, but nobody dared to come and 
bury the dead. If a Frenchman showed himself to look 
for a friend or a brother among the dead he was fired 
at from all directions. His life was dearer to him and 
he never tried again. We had exactly the same ex- 
perience. The French tried the red cross flag. We 
laughed and shot it to pieces. The impulse to shoot 
down the " enemy " suppressed every feeling of hu- 
manity, and the " red cross " had lost its significance 
when raised by a Frenchman. Suspicion was nourished 
artificially, so that we thought the " enemy " was only 
abusing the flag ; and that was why we wanted to shoot 
him and the flag to bits. 

But we ourselves took the French for barbarians be- 
cause they paid us back in kind and prevented us from 
removing our own wounded men to safety. The dead 
remained where they were, and when ten weeks later we 
were sent to another part of the front they were still 
there. 

We had been fortunate in beating back all attacks 
and had inflicted enormous losses upon the enemy with- 
out having ourselves lost many dead or wounded men. 
Under those circumstances no further attack was to be 
expected for the time being. So we employed all our 
strength to fortify our position as strongly as pos- 
sible. Half of the men remained in their places, and 
the other half made the trenches wider and deeper. 
But both sides maintained a continuous lively fire. The 
losses we suffered that day were not especially large, 
but most of the men who were hit were struck in the 



126 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

head, for the rest of the body was protected by the 
trench. 

When darkness began to descend the firing increased 
in violence. Though we could not see anything we 
fired away blindly because we thought the enemy would 
not attempt an attack in that case. We had no 
target and fired always in the direction of the enemy's 
trench. Throughout the night ammunition and ma- 
terials were brought up, and new troops kept arriving. 
Sand bags were brought in great quantities, filled and 
utilized as cover, as a protection from the bullets. The 
sappers were relieved towards morning. We had to 
assemble at a farm behind the firing line. The farm- 
house had been completely preserved, and all the ani- 
mals were still there ; but that splendor was destined to 
disappear soon. Gradually several hundreds of sol- 
diers collected there, and then began a wild chase after 
ducks, geese, pigeons, etc. The feathered tribe, num- 
bering more than 500 head, had been captured in a few 
hours, and everywhere cooking operations were in full 
swing. 

There were more than eighty cows and bullocks in a 
neighboring field. All of them were shot by the soldiers 
and worked into food by the field kitchens. In that 
place everything was taken. Stores of hay and grain 
had been dragged away in a few hours. Even the straw 
sheds and outbuildings were broken up, the wood being 
used as fuel. In a few hours that splendid farm had 
become a wreck, and its proprietor had been reduced 
to beggary. I had seen the owner that morning; but 
he had suddenly disappeared with his wife and children, 
and nobody knew whither. The farm was within reach 
of the artillery fire, and the farmer sought safety some- 
where else. Not a soul cared where he had gone. 



AT THE END OF THE FLIGHT 127 

Rifle bullets, aimed too high, were continually flying 
about us, but nobody cared in the least though several 
soldiers had been hit. A man of our company, named 
Mertens, was sitting on the ground cleaning his rifle 
when he was shot through the neck ; he died a few min- 
utes after. We buried him in the garden of the farm, 
placed his helmet on his grave, and forgot all about 
him. 

Near the farm a German howitzer battery was in 
position. The battery was heavily shelled by the en- 
emy. Just then a munition train consisting of three 
wagons came up to carry ammunition to the battery. 
We had amongst us a sergeant called Luwie, from 
Frankfort-on-the-Main. One of his brothers, also a 
sergeant, was in the column that was passing by. That 
had aroused our interest, and we watched the column 
to see whether it should succeed in reaching the battery 
through the fire the enemy was keeping up. Everything 
seemed to go along all right when suddenly the sergeant, 
the brother of the sapper sergeant, was hit by a shell 
and torn to pieces, together with his horse. All that 
his own brother was watching. It was hard to tell 
what was passing through his mind. He was seen to 
quiver. That was all ; then he stood motionless. Pres- 
ently he went straight to the place of the catastrophe 
without heeding the shells that were striking every- 
where, fetched the body of his brother and laid it down. 
Part of the left foot of the dead man was missing and 
nearly the whole right leg; a piece of shell as big as a 
fist stuck in his chest. He laid down his brother and 
hurried back to recover the missing limbs. He brought 
back the leg, but could not find the foot that had been 
torn off. When we had buried the mangled corpse the 
sergeant borrowed a map of the general staff from an 



128 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

officer and marked the exact spot of the grave so as to 
find it again after the war. 

The farmhouse had meanwhile been turned into a 
bandaging station. Our losses increased very greatly 
judging from the wounded men who arrived in large 
numbers. The farmhouse offered a good target to the 
enemy's artillery. Though it was hidden by a hillock 
some very high poplars towered above that elevation. 
We felled those trees. Towards evening w^e had to go 
back to the trench, for the French were renewing their 
attacks, but without any effect. The fresh troops were 
all very excited, and it was hard for them to get accus- 
tomed to the continued rolling rifle fire. Many of them 
had scarcely taken up their place when they were killed. 
Their blue uniforms offered a good target when they ap- 
proached our positions from behind. 

At night it was fairly quiet, and we conversed with 
the new arrivals. Some of them had had the chance 
of remaining in garrison service, but had volunteered 
for the front. Though they had had only one day in 
the firing line they declared quite frankly that they 
repented of their decision. They had had quite a dif- 
ferent idea of what war was like, and believed it an ad- 
venture, had believed in the fine French wine, had dreamt 
of some splendid castle where one was quartered for 
weeks; they had thought that one would get as much 
to eat and drink as one wished. It was war, and in 
war one simply took what one wanted. 

Such nonsense and similar stuff they had heard of 
veterans of the war of 1870-71, and they had believed 
that they went forward to a life of adventure and ease. 
Bitterly disappointed they were now sitting in the rain 
in a dirty trench, with a vast army of corpses before 
them. And every minute they were in danger of losing 



AT THE END OF THE FLIGHT 129 

their life ! That was a war quite different from the one 
they had pictured to themselves. They knew nothing 
of our retreat and were therefore not a little surprised 
when we related to them the events of the last few days. 



XVI 

THE BEGINNING OF TRENCH WARFAEE 

On the next morning, at daybreak, we quitted the 
trench again in order to rest for two days. We went 
across the fields and took up quarters at Cerney-en- 
Dormois. We lodged in one of the abandoned houses 
in the center of the village. Our field kitchen had not 
yet arrived, so we were obliged to find our own food. 
Members of the feathered tribe were no longer to be 
discovered, but if by any chance a chicken showed its 
head it was immediately chased by a score of men. No 
meat being found we resolved to be vegetarians for the 
time being, and roamed through the gardens in search 
of potatoes and vegetables. On that expedition we 
discovered an officer's horse tied to a fence. We knew 
by experience that the saddle bags of officers' horses 
always concealed something that could be eaten. We 
were hungry enough, and quickly resolved to lead the 
horse away. We searched him thoroughly under 
" cover," and found in the saddle bags quite a larder of 
fine foodstuffs, butter and lard among them. Then 
we turned the horse loose and used the captured treas- 
ure to prepare a meal, the like of which we had not 
tasted for a long time. 

It tasted fine in spite of our guilty conscience. One 
man made the fire, another peeled the potatoes, etc. 
Pots and a stove we found in one of the kitchens of the 
bouses in the neighborhood. 

130 



THE BEGINNING OF TRENCH WARFARE 131 

Towards evening long trains with provisions and 
endless rows of fresh troops arrived. In long columns 
they marched to the front and relieved the exhausted 
men. Soon the whole place was crowded with soldiers. 
After a two days' rest we had to take up again the 
regular night duties of the sapper. Every night we 
had to visit the position to construct wire entangle- 
ments. The noise caused by the ramming in of the 
posts mostly drew the attention of the French upon us, 
and thus we suffered losses almost every night. But our 
rest during the daytime was soon to be put an end to, 
for the enemy's artillery began to shell the place regu- 
larly. Curiously enough, the shelling took place al- 
ways at definite hours. Thus, at the beginning, every 
noon from 12 to 2 o'clock from fifty to eighty shells 
used to fall in the place. At times the missiles were 
shrapnel from the field artillery. One got accustomed 
to it, though soldiers of other arms were killed or 
wounded daily. Once we were lying at noon in our lodg- 
ings when a shrapnel shell exploded in our room, happily 
without doing any damage. The whole room was filled 
with dust and smoke, but not one troubled to leave his 
place. That sort of shooting was repeated almost daily 
with increasing violence. The remaining inhabitants of 
the village, mostly old people, were all lodged in a barn 
for fear of espionage. There they were guarded by 
soldiers. As the village was being bombarded always 
at certain hours the officer in command of the place 
believed that somebody in the village communicated with 
the enemy with a hidden telephone. They even went so 
far as to remove the hands of the church clock, because 
somebody had seen quite distinctly " that the hands 
of the clock (which was not going) had moved and 
were pointing to 6 and immediately afterwards to 5." 



132 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

Of course, the spy that had signaled to the enemy by 
means of the church clock could be discovered as little 
as the man with the concealed telephone. But in order 
to be quite sure to catch the " real " culprit all the 
civilians were interned in the barn. Those civilian pris- 
oners were provided with food and drink like the soldiers, 
but like the soldiers they were also exposed to the daily 
bombardment, which gradually devastated the whole 
village. Two women and a child had already been 
killed in consequence and yet the people were not re- 
moved. Almost daily a house burned down at some spot 
or other in the village, and the shells now began falling 
at 8 o'clock in the evening. The shells were of a 
large size. We knew exactly that the first shell arrived 
punctually at 8 o'clock, and we left the place every 
night. The whole village became empty, and exactly 
at 8 o'clock the first shell came buzzing heavily over 
to our side. At short intervals, fourteen or sixteen at 
the most, but never more, followed it. Those sixteen 
we nicknamed the " iron portion." Our opinion was 
that the gun was sent forward by the French when it be- 
came dark, that it fired a few shots, and was then taken 
to the rear again. When we returned from our " walk," 
as we called that nightly excursion, we had to go to our 
positions. There we had to perform all imaginable 
kinds of work. One evening we had to fortify a small 
farm we had taken from the French the day before. We 
were to construct machine-gun emplacements. The 
moon was shining fairly brightly. In an adjoining 
garden there were some fruit trees, an apple tree among 
them, with some apples still attached to it. A French- 
man had hanged himself on that tree. Though the 
body must have hung for some days — for it smelled 
considerably — some of our sappers were eager to get 



THE BEGINNING OF TRENCH WARFARE 13S 

the apples. The soldiers took the apples without 
troubling in the least about the dead man. 

Near that farm we used mine throwers for the first 
time. The instruments we used there were of a very 
primitive kind. They consisted of a pipe made of 
strong steel plate and resting on an iron stand. An 
unexploded shell or shrapnel was filled with dynamite, 
provided with a fuse and cap, and placed in the tube 
of the mine thrower. Behind it was placed a driving 
charge of black powder of a size corresponding with 
the distance of the target and the weight of the pro- 
jectile. The driving charge, too, was provided with 
a fuse that was of such a length that the explosion was 
only produced after the man lighting the fuse had had 
time to return to a place of safety. The fuse of the 
mine was lit at the same time as the former, but was of 
a length commensurate with the time of flight of the 
mine, so as to explode the latter when the mine struck 
the target, or after a calculated period should the mark 
be missed. The driving charge must be of such strength 
that it throws the projectile no farther than is in- 
tended. The mine thrower is not fired horizontally but 
at a steep angle. The tube from which the mine is fired 
is, for instance, placed at an angle of 45 degrees, and 
receives a charge of fifteen grammes of black powder 
when the distance is 400 yards. 

It happens that the driving charge does not explode, 
and the projectile remains in the tube. The fuse of the 
mine continues burning, and the mine explodes in the 
tube and demolishes the stand and everything in its 
neighborhood. When we used those mine throwers 
here for the first time an accident of the kind described 
happened. Two volunteers and a sapper who were in 
charge of the mine thrower in question thought the 



134 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

explosion took too long a time. They believed it was 
a miss. When they had approached to the distance 
of some five paces the mine exploded and all three of 
them were wounded very severely. We had too little 
experience in the management of mine throwers. They 
had been forgotten, had long ago been thrown on the 
junk heap, giving way to more modern technical appli- 
ances of war. Thus, when they suddenly cropped up 
again during the war of position, we had to learn their 
management from the beginning. The officers, who un- 
derstood those implements still less than we ourselves 
did, could not give us any hints, so it was no wonder 
that accidents like the foregoing happened frequently. 

Those mine throwers cannot be employed for long 
distances; at 600 yards they reach the utmost limit of 
their effectiveness. 

Besides handling the mine throwers we had to fur- 
nish secret patrols every night. The chief purpose of 
those excursions was the destruction of the enemy's de- 
fenses or to harry the enemy's sentries so as to deprive 
them of sleep. 

We carried hand grenades for attack and defense. 
When starting on such an excursion we were always 
instructed to find out especially the number of the army 
section that an opponent we might kill belonged to. 
The French generally have their regimental number on 
the collars of their coat or on their cap. So when- 
ever we "spiflicated " one and succeeded in getting near 
him we would cut that number out of his coat with a 
knife or take away his coat or cap. In that way the 
German army command identified the opposing army 
corps. They thus got to know exactly the force our 
opponent was employing and whether his best troops 
were in front of us. All of us greatly feared those 



THE BEGINNING OF TRENCH WARFARE 1S5 

night patrols, for the hundreds of men killed months 
ago were still lying between the lines. Those corpses 
were decomposed to a pulp. So when a man went on 
nocturnal patrol duty and when he had to crawl in the 
utter darkness on hands and knees over all those bodies 
he would now and then land in the decomposed faces of 
the dead. If then a man happened to have a tiny 
wound in his hands his life was greatly endangered by 
the septic virus. As a matter of fact three sappers and 
two infantrymen of the landwehr regiment No. 17 died 
in consequence of poisoning by septic virus. Later on 
that kind of patroling was given up or only resorted to 
in urgent cases, and only such men were employed who 
were free of wounds. That led to nearly all of us in- 
flicting skin wounds to ourselves to escape patrol duty. 
Our camping place, Cerney-en-Dormois, was still 
being bombarded violently by the enemy every day. 
The firing became so heavy at last that we could no 
longer sleep during the day. The large shells pene- 
trated the houses and reached the cellars. The civilian 
prisoners were sent away after some had been killed 
by shells. We ourselves, however, remained in the place 
very much against our inclination in spite of the con- 
tinuous bombardment. Part of our company lived in 
a large farmhouse, where recently arrived reserves 
were also lodged. One da}^, at noon, the village was 
suddenly overwhelmed by a hail of shells of a large size. 
Five of them struck the farmhouse mentioned, almost 
at the same time. All the men were resting in the spa- 
cious rooms. The whole building was demolished, and 
our loss consisted of 17 dead and 28 wounded men. The 
field kitchen in the yard was also completely destroyed. 
Without waiting for orders we all cleared out of the 
village and collected again outside. But the captain 



136 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

ordered us to return to the place because, so he said, 
he had not yet received orders from the divisional com- 
mander to evacuate the village. Thereupon we went 
back to our old quarters and embarked again on a 
miserable existence. After living in the trenches dur- 
ing the night, in continual danger of life, we arrived in 
the morning, after those hours of trial, with shattered 
nerves, at our lodgings. We could not hope to get any 
rest and sleep, for the shells kept falling everywhere in 
the village. In time, however, one becomes accustomed 
to everything. When a shell came shrieking along we 
knew exactly whereabout it would strike. By the sound 
it made we knew whether it was of large or small size 
and whether the shell, having come down, would burst 
or not. Similarly the soldiers formed a reliable judg- 
ment in regard to the nationality of an aeroplane. 
When an aeroplane was seen at a great distance near 
the horizon the soldiers could mostly say exactly 
whether it was a German or a French flying machine. 
It is hard to say by what we recognized the machines. 
One seems to feel whether it is a friend or a foe that is 
coming. Of course, a soldier also remembers the char- 
acteristic noise of the motor and the construction cf 
the aeroplane. 

When a French flier passed over our camp the streets 
would quickly empty themselves. The reason was not 
that we were afraid of the flying man ; we disappeared 
because we knew that a bombardment would follow after 
he had landed and reported. We left the streets so as 
to convey the impression that the place was denuded 
of troops. But the trick was not of much use. Every 
day houses were set alight, and the church, which had 
been furnished as a hospital, was also struck several 
times. 



THE BEGINNING OP TRENCH WARFARE 137 

Up to that time it had been comparatively quiet at 
the front. We had protected our position with wide 
wire entanglements. Quite a maze of trenches, a thing 
that defies description, had been constructed. One 
must have seen it in order to comprehend what immense 
masses of soil had been dug up. 

Our principal position consisted of from 6 to 8 
trenches, one behind the other and each provided with 
strong parapets and barbed wire entanglements; each 
trench had been separately fortified. The distance be- 
tween the various trenches was sometimes 20 yards, 
sometimes a hundred and more, all according to the 
requirements of the terrain. All those positions were 
joined by lines of approach. Those connecting roads 
arc not wide, are only used by the relieving troops and 
for transporting purposes, and are constructed m a 
way that prevents the enemy from enfilading them; 
they run in a zigzag course. To the rear of the com- 
munication trenches are the shelters of the resting 
troops (reserves). Two companies of infantry, for m- 
stance, will have to defend in the first trench a section 
of the front measuring some two hundred yards. One 
company is always on duty, whilst the other is resting 
in the rear. However, the company at rest must ever 
be ready for the firing line and is likely to be alarmed 
at any minute for service at a moment's notice should 
the enemy attack. The company is in telephonic com- 
munication with the one doing trench duty. Wherever 
the country (as on swampy ground) does not permit 
the construction of several trenches and the housmg of 
the reserves the latter are stationed far in the rear, 
often in the nearest village. In such places, rehevmg 
operations, though carried out only at night are very 
difficult and almost always accompanied by casualties. 



138 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

Relief is not brought up at fixed hours, for the enemy 
must be deceived. But the enemy will be informed of 
local conditions by his fliers, patrols or the statements 
of prisoners, and will keep the country under a con- 
tinual heavy curtain fire, so that the relieving troops 
coming up across the open field almost always suffer 
losses. Food and ammunition are also forwarded at 
night. The following incident will illustrate the dif- 
ficulty even one man by himself experiences in approach- 
ing such positions. 

Myself, a sergeant, and three .others had been or- 
dered on secret patrol duty one night. Towards ten 
o'clock we came upon the line of the curtain fire. We 
were lying flat on the ground, waiting for a favorable 
opportunity to cross. However, one shell after the 
other exploded in front of us, and it would have been 
madness to attempt to pass at that point. Next to 
me lay a sapper of my own annual military class ; noth- 
ing could be seen of the sergeant and the two other 
privates. On a slight elevation in front of us we saw 
in the moonlight the shadowy forms of some persons who 
were lying flat on the ground like ourselves. We 
thought it impossible to pass here. My mate, pointing 
to the shapes before us said, " There's Sergeant Mertens 
and the others ; I think I'll go up to them and tell him 
that we had better wait a while until it gets more 
quiet." " Yes : do so," I replied. He crawled to the 
place on his hands and knees, and I observed him ly- 
ing near the others. He returned immediately. The 
shapes turned out to be four dead Frenchmen of the 
colonial army, who had been there for weeks. He had 
only seen who they were when he received no answer to 
his report. The dead thus lay scattered over the whole 
country. Nothing could be seen of the sergeant and 



THE BEGINNING OF TRENCH WARFARE 139 

the other men. So we seized a favorable opportunity 
to slip through, surrounded bj exploding shells. We 
could find out nothing about our companions. Our 
search in the trench was likewise unsuccessful; nobody 
could give us the slightest information though sappers 
were well known among the infantry, because we had to 
work at all the points of the front. An hour later the 
relieving infantry arrived. They had lost five men in 
breaking through the barrier fire. Our sergeant was 
among the wounded they brought in. Not a trace was 
ever found of the two other soldiers. Nobody knew 
what had become of them. 

Under such and similar conditions we spent every 
night outside. We also suffered losses in our camp 
almost every day. Though reserves from our garrison 
town had arrived twice already our company had a 
fighting strength of only 75 men. But at last we 
cleared out of the village, and were stationed at the vil- 
lage of Boucoville, about a mile and a half to the north- 
east of Cerney-en-Dormois. Cerney-en-Dormois was 
gradually shelled to pieces, and when at night we had 
to go to the trench we described a wide circle around 
that formerly flourishing village. 

At Boucoville we received the first letters from home 
by the field post. They had been on their journey for 
a long, long time, and arrived irregularly and in sheaves. 
But many were returned, marked, " Addressee killed," 
" Addressee missing," " Wounded." However, many 
had to be marked, " Addressee no longer with the army 
detachment." They could not quite make out the dis- 
appearance of many " addressees," but many of us had 
just suspicions about them, and we wished good luck to 
those " missing men " in crossing some neutral frontier. 

The letters we received were dated the first days of 



140 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

August, had wandered everywhere, bore the stamps of 
various field post-offices and, in contrast with the ones 
we received later on, were still full of enthusiasm. 
Mothers were not yet begging their sons not to risk 
their lives in order to gain the iron cross ; that implor- 
ing prayer should arrive later on again and again. It 
was also at that place that we received the first of those 
small field post-parcels containing cigars and chocolate. 

After staying some ten weeks in that part of the coun- 
try we were directed to another part of the front. No- 
body knew, however, whither we were going to be sent. 
It was all the same to us. The chance of getting out 
of the firing line for a few days had such a charm for 
us that our destination did not concern us in the least. 
It gave us a wonderful feeling of relief, when we left 
the firing zone on our march to the railroad station 
at Challerange. For the first time in a long period we 
found ourselves in a state of existence where our lives 
were not immediately endangered; even the most far- 
reaching guns could no longer harm us. A man must 
have lived through such moments in order to appreciate 
justly the importance of such a feeling. However much 
one has got accustomed to being in constant danger 
of one's life, that danger never ceases to oppress one, 
to weigh one down. 

At the station we got into a train made up of second 
and third-class coaches. The train moved slowly 
through the beautiful autumnal landscape, and for the 
first time we got an insight into the life behind the front. 
All the depots, the railroad crossings and bridges were 
held by the military. There all the men of the land- 
sturm were apparently leading quite an easy life, and 
had made themselves comfortable in the depots and 
shanties of the road-men. They all looked well nour- 



THE BEGINNING OF TRENCH WARFARE 141 

ished and were well clad. Whenever the train stopped 
those older men treated us liberally to coffee, bread, and 
fruit. They could see by our looks that we had not 
had the same good time that they were having. They 
asked us whence we came. Behind the front things 
were very lively everywhere. At all the larger places 
we could see long railway trains laden with agricultural 
machinery of every description. The crew of our train 
were men of the Prusso-Hessian state railroads. They 
had come through those parts many times before, and 
told us that the agricultural machines were being re- 
moved from the whole of the occupied territory and sent 
to East Prussia in order to replace what the Russians 
had destroyed there. The same was being done with 
all industrial machinery that could be spared. Again 
and again one could observe the finest machines on their 
way to Germany. 

Towards midnight we passed Sedan. There we were 
fed by the Red Cross. The Red Cross had erected feed- 
ing stations for passing troops in long wooden sheds. 
Early next morning we found ourselves at Montmedy. 
There we had to leave the train, and were allowed to 
visit the town for a few hours. 



XVII 

FEIENDLY KELATIONS WITH THE ENEMY 

There was no lack of food at Montmedy. The can- 
teens were provided with everything; prices were high, 
however. Montmedy is a third-class French fortress 
and is situated like Ehrenbreitstein on a height which 
is very steep on one side; the town is situated at the 
foot of the hill. The fortress was taken by the Ger- 
mans without a struggle. The garrison who had pre- 
pared for defense before the fortress, had their retreat 
cut off. A railroad tunnel passes through the hill un- 
der the fortress, but that had been blown up by the 
French. The Germans laid the rails round the hill 
through the town so as to establish railroad communi- 
cations with their front. It looked almost comical to 
watch the transport trains come rolling on through the 
main street and across the market place. Everywhere 
along the Meuse the destroyed bridges had been re- 
placed by wooden ones. Montmedy was the chief base 
of the Fifth Army (that of the Crown Prince), and con- 
tained immense stores of war material. Besides that it 
harbored the field post-office, the headquarters for army 
provisions, a railroad management, and a great number 
of hospitals. The largest of them used to be called 
the " theater hospital," on account of its being installed 
in the municipal theater and the adjoining houses, and 
always contained from 500 to 600 wounded. 

Things were very lively at Montmedy. One chiefly 

142 



FRIENDLY RELATIONS WITH THE ENEMY 143 

observed convalescent soldiers walking through the 
streets and a remarkable number of officers, all of whom 
had been attached to the various departments. They 
loitered about in their faultless uniforms, or rode along 
whip in hand. Moreover, they had not yet the slightest 
idea of what war was like, and when we met them they 
expected us to salute them in the prescribed manner. 
Many of them accosted us and asked us rudely why we 
did not salute. After a few hours we got sick of life 
twenty miles behind the Verdun front. 

At Montmedy we were about twenty miles behind 
Verdun and some sixty miles away from our former po- 
sition. When towards one o'clock p. m. we began to 
move on we guessed that we were to be dragged to the 
country round Verdun. After a march of nine miles 
we reached the village of Fametz. There we were lodged 
in various barns. Nearly all of the inhabitants had 
stayed on; they seemed to be on quite friendly terms 
with the soldiers. Time had brought them closer to 
each other, and we, too, got an entirely different idea 
of our "hereditary enemy" on closer acquamtance. 
When walking through the place we were offered all 
kinds of things by the inhabitants, were treated to cof- 
fee, meat, and milk, exactly as is done by German pa- 
triots during maneuvers and we were even treated bet- 
ter than at home. To reward them for these marks of 
attention we murdered the sons of those people who 
desired nothing better than living in peace. 

Early next morning we moved on, and when we ar- 
rived at Damvillers in the evening we heard that we 
were some three miles behind the firing line. That very 
night we marched to the small village of Warville. That 
was our destination, and there we took up our quarters 
in a house that had been abandoned by its inhabitants. 



144. A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

We were attached to the ninth reserve division, and the 
following day already we had to take up our positions. 
Fifteen of us were attached to a company of infantry. 
No rifle firing was to be heard along the line, only the 
artillery of the two sides maintained a w^eak fire. We 
were not accustomed to such quietness in the trenches, 
but the men who had been here for a long time told us 
that sometimes not a shot was fired for days and that 
there was not the slightest activity on either side. It 
seemed to us that we were going to have a nice quiet 
time. 

The trench in that section crossed the main road 
leading from Damvillers to Verdun (a distance of some 
fifteen miles). The enem3^'s position was about 300 
yards in front of us. German and French troops were 
always patroling the road from six o'clock at night till 
the morning. At night time those troops were always 
standing together. Germans and Frenchmen met, and 
the German soldiers had a liking for that duty. Neither 
side thought for a moment to shoot at the other one ; 
everybody had just to be at his post. In time both 
sides had cast away suspicions ; every night the " hered- 
itary enemies " shook hands with each other ; and on 
the following morning the relieved sentries related to us 
with pleasure how liberall}^ the Frenchmen had shared 
everything with them. They always exchanged news- 
papers with them, and so it came about that we got 
French papers every day, the contents of which were 
translated to us by a soldier who spoke the French 
language. 

By day we were able to leave the trench, and we 
would be relieved across the open field without running 
any danger. The French had no ideas of shooting at 
us; neither did we think of shooting at the French. 



FRIENDLY RELATIONS WITH THE ENEMY 145 

When we were relieved we saluted our enemies by waving 
our helmets, and immediately the others replied by wav- 
ing their caps. When we wanted water we had to go to 
a farm situated between the lines. The French too, 
fetched their water from there. It would have been 
easy for each side to prevent the other from using that 
well, but we used to go up to it quite unconcerned, 
watched by the French. The latter used to wait till 
we trotted off again with our cooking pots filled, and 
then they would come up and provide themselves with 
water. At night it often happened that we and the 
Frenchmen arrived at the well at the same time. In 
such a case one of the parties would wait politely until 
the other had done. Thus it happened that three of 
us were at the well without any arms when a score of 
Frenchmen arrived with cooking pots. Though the 
Frenchmen were seven times as numerous as ourselves 
the thought never struck them that they might fall upon 
us. The twenty men just waited quietly till we had 
done; we then saluted them and went off. 

One night a French sergeant came to our trench. 
He spoke German very well, said he was a deserter, and 
begged us to regard him as our prisoner. But the in- 
fantrymen became angry and told him to get back to 
the French as quickly as possible. Meanwhile a second 
Frenchman had come up and asked excitedly whether a 
man of theirs had not deserted to us a short while ago. 
Then our section leader, a young lieutenant, arrived 
upon the scene, and the Frenchman who had come last 
begged him to send the deserter back. " For," so he 
remarked, " if our officers get to know that one of our 
men has voluntarily given himself up we shall have to 
say good-by to the good time we are having, and the 
shooting will begin again." 



146 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

We, too, appreciated the argument that such inci- 
dents would only make our position worse. The lieu- 
tenant vanished; he did not want to have a finger in 
that pie ; very likely he also desired that things remain 
as they were. We quickly surrendered the deserter; 
each one of the two Frenchmen was presented with a 
cigarette, and then they scurried away full steam ahead. 

We felt quite happy under those circumstances and 
did not wish for anything better. On our daily return 
journeys we observed that an immense force of artillery 
was being gathered and were placed in position further 
back. New guns arrived every day, but were not fired. 
The same lively activity could be observed in regard 
to the transportation of ammunition and material. 
At that time we did not yet suspect that these 
were the first preparations for a strong offensive. 

After staying in that part of the country some four 
weeks we were again ordered to some other part of the 
front. As usual we had no idea of our new destination. 
Various rumors were in circulation. Some thought it 
would be Flanders, others thought it would be Russia; 
but none guessed right. 

We marched off and reached Dun-sur-Meuse in the 
afternoon. We had scarcely got to the town when the 
German Crown Prince, accompanied by some officers 
and a great number of hounds, rode past us. " Good 
day, sappers ! " he called to us, looking at us closely. 
He spoke to our captain, and an officer of his staff took 
us to an establishment of the Red Cross where we re- 
ceived good food and wine. The headquarters of the 
Hohenzollern scion was here at Dun-sur-Meuse. The 
ladies of the Red Cross treated us very well. We asked 
them whether all the troops passing through the place 
were cared for as well as that. " O yes," a young 



FRIENDLY RELATIONS WITH THE ENEMY 147 

lady replied; "only few pass through here,^but the 
Crown Prince has a special liking for sappers." 

We lodged there for the night, and the soldiers told 
us that Dun-sur-Meuse was the headquarters of the 
Fifth Army, that life was often very jolly there, and 
every day there was an open air concert. We heard 
that the officers often received ladies from Germany, 
but, of course, the ladies only came to distribute gifts 
among the soldiers. 

Richly provided with food we continued our march 
the next morning, and kept along the side of the Meuse. 
In the evening we were lodged at Stenay. 



XVIII 

FIGHTING IN THE ARGONNES 

Finally, after two days, we landed at Apremont-en- 
Argonne. For the time being we were quartered in a 
large farm to the northeast of Apremont. We found 
ourselves quite close to the Argonnes. All the soldiers 
whom we met and who had been there for some time told 
us of uninterrupted daily fighting in those woods. 

Our first task was to construct underground shelters 
that should serve as living rooms. We commenced 
work at about a mile and three quarters behind the 
front, but had to move on after some shells had de- 
stroyed our work again. We then constructed, about 
a mile and a quarter behind the front, a camp consist- 
ing of thirty-five underground shelters. 

A hole is dug, some five yards square and two yards 
deep. Short tree trunks are laid across it, and about 
two yards of earth piled upon them. We had no straw, 
so we had to sleep on the bare ground for a while. 
Rifle bullets coming from the direction of the front kept 
flying above our heads and struck the trees. We were 
attached to the various companies of infantry; I my- 
self was with the tenth company of the infantry regi- 
ment No. 67. 

The soil had been completely ploughed up by con- 
tinued use, and the paths and roads had been covered 
with sticks and tree trunks so that they could be used 

by men and wagons. After an arduous march we 

148 



FIGHTING IN THE ARGONNES 149 

reached the foremost position. It was no easy task to 
find one's way in that maze of trenches. The water was 
more than a foot deep in those trenches. At last we 
arrived at the most advanced position and reported to 
the captain of the tenth company of the 67th regiment 
of infantry. Of course, the conditions obtaining there 
were quite unknown to us, but the men of the infantry 
soon explained things to us as far as they could. After 
two or three days we were already quite familiar with 
our surroundings, and our many-sided duty began. 

The French lay only some ten yards away from us. 
The second day we were engaged in a fight with hand 
grenades. In that fight Sapper Beschtel from Saar- 
brucken was killed. He was our first casualty in the 
Argonnes, but many were to follow him in the time that 
followed. In the rear trenches we had established an 
engineering depot. There 25 men made nothing but 
hand grenades. Thus we soon had made ourselves at 
home, and were ready for all emergencies. 

At the camp we were divided in various sections. 
That division in various sections gave us an idea of the 
endless ways and means employed in our new position. 
There were mining, sapping, hand grenade sections, 
sections for mine throwing and illuminating pistols. 
Others again constructed wire entanglements, chevaux- 
de-frise, or projectiles for the primitive mine throwers. 
At one time one worked in one section then again in 
another. The forest country was very difficult. The 
thick, tangled underwood formed by itself an almost 
insuperable obstacle. All the trees were shot down up 
to the firing level. Cut off clean by the machine-guns 
they lay in all directions on the ground, forming a 
natural barricade. 

The infantrymen had told us about the difficulties 



150 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

under which fighting was carried on uninterruptedly. 
Not a day passed without casualties. Firing went on 
without a pause. The men had never experienced an 
interval in the firing. We soon were to get an idea of 
that mass murder, that systematic slaughter. The 
largest part of our company was turned into a mine 
laying section, and we began to mine our most advanced 
trench. For a distance of some 500 yards, a yard 
apart, we dug in boxes of dynamite, each weighing 50 
pounds. Each of those mines was provided with a fuse 
and all were connected so that all the mines could be 
exploded at the same instant. The mines were then 
covered with soil again and the connecting wires taken 
some hundred yards to the rear. 

At that time the French were making attacks every 
few days. We were told to abandon the foremost 
trench should an attack be made. The mines had been 
laid two days when the expected attack occurred, and 
without offering any great resistance we retreated to 
the second trench. The French occupied the captured 
trench without knowing that several thousands of 
pounds of explosives lay buried under their feet. So 
as to cause our opponents to bring as many troops as 
possible into the occupied trench we pretended to make 
counter attacks. As a matter of fact the French trench 
was soon closely manned by French soldiers who tried to 
retain it. 

But that very moment our mines were exploded. 
There was a mighty bang, and several hundreds of 
Frenchmen were literally torn to pieces and blown up 
into the air. It all happened in a moment. Parts of 
human bodies spread over a large stretch of ground, 
and the arms, legs, and rags of uniforms hanging in the 
trees, were the only signs of a well planned mass mur- 



FIGHTING IN THE ARGONNES 151 

der. In view of that catastrophe all we had experi- 
enced before seemed to us to be child's play. That 
" heroic deed " was celebrated by a lusty hurrah. 

For some days one had gained a little advantage, 
only to lose it again soon. In order to make advances 
the most diverse methods were used, as was said before. 
The mining section would cut a subterranean passage 
up to the enemy's position. The passage would branch 
out to the right and left a yard or so before the posi- 
tion of our opponent, and run parallel with it. The 
work takes of course weeks to accomplish, for the whole 
of the loosened soil must be taken to the rear on small 
mining wagons. Naturally, the soil taken out must not 
be heaped in one place, for if that were done the enemy 
would get wind of our intentions and would spoil every- 
thing by countermining. As soon as work is advanced 
far enough the whole passage running parallel with the 
enemy's trench is provided with explosives and dammed 
up. When the mine is exploded the whole of the en- 
emy's trench is covered by the soil that is thrown up, 
burying many soldiers alive. Usually such an explo- 
sion is followed by an assault. The sapping section, 
on the other hand, have to dig open trenches running 
towards the enemy's position. These are connected by 
transversal trenches, the purpose being to get one's 
own position always closer to the enemy's. As soon 
as one's position has approached near enough to make 
it possible to throw hand grenades into the enemy's po- 
sition the hand grenade sections have to take up their 
places and bombard the enemy's trenches continually 
with hand grenades, day and night. 

Some few hundred yards to the rear are the heavy 
modern mine throwers firing a projectile weighing 140 
pounds. Those projectiles, which look like sugar 



152 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

loaves, fly cumbrously over to the enemy where they 
do great damage. The trade of war must not stop at 
night; so the darkness is made bright by means of 
illuminating rockets. The illuminating cartridge is 
fired from a pistol, and for a second all is bright as day. 
As all that kind of work was done by sappers the French 
hated the sappers especially, and French prisoners often 
told us that German prisoners with white buttons and 
black ribbons on their caps (sappers) would be treated 
without any mercy. Warned by the statements of 
those prisoners nearly all provided themselves with in- 
fantry uniforms. We knew that we had gradually be- 
come some specialty in the trenches. 

If the infantry were molested somew^here by the en- 
emy's hand grenades they used to come running up to 
us and begged us to go and meet the attack. Each of 
us received a cigar to light the hand grenades, and then 
we were off. Ten or twenty of us rained hand grenades 
on the enemy's trench for hours until one's arm got too 
stiff with throwing. 

Thus the slaughter continued, day after day, night 
after night. We had 48 hours in the trenches and 12 
hours' sleep. It was found impossible to divide the 
time differently, for we were too few. The whole of 
the forest had been shot and torn to tatters. The ar- 
tillery was everywhere and kept the villages behind the 
enemy's position under fire. Once one of the many bat- 
teries which we always passed on our way from camp to 
the front was just firing when we came by. I interro- 
gated one of the sighting gunners what their target 
might be. " Some village or other," the gunner replied. 
The representative of the leader of the battery, a lieu- 
tenant-colonel, was present. One of my mates inquired 
whether women and children might not be in the villages. 



FIGHTING IN THE ARGONNES 153 

" That's neither here nor there," said the lieutenant- 
colonel, " the women and children are French, too, so 
what's the harm done? Even their litter must be anni- 
hilated so as to knock out of that nation for a hundred 
years any idea of war." 

If that " gentleman " thought to win applause he 
was mistaken. We went our way, leaving him to his 
" enjoyment." 

On that day an assault on the enemy's position 
had been ordered, and we had to be in our places at 
seven o'clock in the morning. The 67th regiment was 
to attack punctually at half past eight, the sappers 
taking the lead. The latter had been provided with 
hand grenades for that purpose. We were only some 
twenty yards away from the enemy. Those attacks, 
which were repeated every week, were prepared by artil- 
lery fire half an hour before the assault began. The 
artillery had to calculate their fire very carefully, be- 
cause the distance between the trench and that of the 
enemy was very small. That distance varied from three 
to a hundred yards, it was nowhere more than that. 
At our place it was twenty yards. Punctually at eight 
o'clock the artillery began to thunder forth. The first 
three shots struck our own trench, but those following 
squarely hit the mark, i.e., the French trench. The 
artillery had got the exact range and then the volleys 
of whole batteries began to scream above our heads. 
Every time the enemy's trench or the roads leading 
to it were hit with wonderful accuracy. One could hear 
the wounded cry, a sign that many a one had already 
been crippled. An artillery officer made observa- 
tions in the first trench and directed the fire by tele- 
phone. 

The artillery became silent exactly at half past eight, 



154. A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

and we passed to the assault. But the 11th com- 
pany of regiment No. 67, of which I spoke before, 
found itself in a such a violent machine-gun fire that 
eighteen men had been killed a few paces from our 
trench. The dead and wounded had got entangled in 
the wild jumble of the trees and branches encumbering 
the ground. Whoever could run tried to reach the 
enemy's trench as quickly as possible. Some of the 
enemy defended themselves desperately in their trench, 
which was filled with mud and water, and violent hand 
to hand fighting ensued. We stood in the water up to 
our knees, killing the rest of our opponents. Seriously 
wounded men were lying flat in the mud with only their 
mouths and noses showing above the water. But what 
did we care! They were stamped deeper in the mud, 
for we could not see where we were stepping; and so 
we rolled up the whole trench. Thereupon the con- 
quered position was fortified as well as it could be done 
in all haste. Again we had won a few yards of the 
Argonnes at the price of many lives. That trench had 
changed its owners innumerable times before, a matter 
of course in the Argonnes, and we awaited the usual 
counter attack. 

Presently the " mules " began to get active. 
" Mules " are the guns of the French mountain artil- 
lery. As those guns are drawn by mules, the soldier 
in the Argonnes calls them " mules " for short. They 
are very light guns with a flat trajectory, and are 
fired from a distance of only 50-100 yards behind the 
French front. The shells of those guns w^histled above 
our heads. Cutting their way through the branches 
they fly along with lightning rapidity to explode in or 
above some trench. In consequence of the rapid flight 
and the short distance the noise of the firing and the 



FIGHTING IN THE ARGONNES 155 

explosion almost unite in a single bang. Those 
" mules " are much feared by the German soldiers, be- 
cause those guns are active day and night. Thus day 
by day we lived through the same misery. 



XIX 

CHRISTMAS IN THE TEENCHES 

WiNTEE had arrived and it was icy cold. The 
trenches, all of which had underground water, had been 
turned into mere mud holes. The cold at night was 
intense, and we had to do 48 hours' work with 12 hours' 
sleep. Every week we had to make an attack the re- 
sult of which was in no proportion to the immense 
losses. During the entire four months that I was in 
the Argonnes we had a gain of terrain some 400 yards 
deep. The following fact will show the high price that 
was paid in human life for that little piece of France. 
All the regiments (some of these were the infantry 
regiments Nos. 145, 67, 173, and the Hirschberg 
sharpshooting battalion No. 5) had their own ceme- 
tery. When we were relieved in the Argonnes there 
were more dead in our cemetery than our regiment 
counted men. The 67th regiment had buried more 
than SOOO men in its cemetery, all of whom, with the 
exception of a few sappers, had belonged to regiment 
No. 67. Not a day passed without the loss of human 
lives, and on a " storming day " death had an extraor- 
dinarily rich harvest. Each day had its victims, some- 
times more, sometimes fewer. It must appear quite 
natural that under such conditions the soldiers were 
not in the best of moods. The men were all completely 
stupefied. Just as they formerly went to work regu- 
larly to feed the wife and children they now went to 

156 



CHRISTMAS IN THE TRENCHES 157 

the trenches in just the same regular way. That busi- 
ness of slaughtering and working had become an every 
day affair. When they conversed it was always the 
army leaders, the Crown Prince and Lieutenant-General 
von Mudra, the general in command of the 16th Army 
Corps, that were most criticized. 

The troops in the Argonnes belonged to the 16th 
Army Corps, to the 33rd and 34th division of infantry. 
Neither of the two leaders, neither the Crown Prince 
nor von Mudra, have I ever seen in the trenches. The 
staff of the Crown Prince had among its members the 
old General-Fieldmarshal Count von Plaeseler, the 
former commander of the 16th Army Corps, a man who 
in times of peace was already known as a relentless 
slave driver. The " triplets," as we called the trio, 
the Crown Prince, von Mudra, and Count von Haeseler, 
were more hated by most of the soldiers than the French- 
man who was out with his gun to take our miserable 
life. 

Many miles behind the front the scion of the Hohen- 
zollerns found no difficulty to spout his " knock them 
hard ! " and, at the price of thousands of human lives, 
to make himself popular with the patriots at home 
who were sitting there behind the snug stove or at the 
beer table complaining that we did not advance fast 
enough. Von Mudra got the order " Pour le merite " ; 
they did not think of his soldiers who had not seen a 
bed, nor taken off their trousers or boots for months; 
these were provided with food — and shells, and were 
almost being eaten up by vermin. 

That we were covered with body lice was not to be 
wondered at, for we had scarcely enough water for 
drinking purposes, and could not think of having a 
wash. We had worn our clothes for months without 



158 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

changing them; the hair on our heads and our beards 
had grown to great length. When we had some hours 
in which to rest, the lice would not let us sleep. 

The air in the shelters was downright pestiferous, 
and to that foul stench of perspiration and putrefac- 
tion was added the plague of lice. At times one was 
sitting up for hours and could not sleep, though one 
was dead tired. One could catch lice, and the more 
one caught the worse they got. We were urgently in 
want of sleep, but it was impossible to close the eyes 
on account of the vermin. We led a loathsome, piti- 
ful life, and at times we said to one another that no- 
body at home even suspected the condition we were in. 
We often told one another that if later on we should 
relate to our families the facts as they really were they 
would not believe them. Many soldiers tried to put our 
daily experience in verse. 

There were many of such jingles illustrating our 
barbarous handicraft. 

It was in the month of December and the weather was 
extremely cold. At times we often stood in the trenches 
with the mud running into our trousers' pockets. In 
those icy cold nights we used to sit in the trenches 
almost frozen to a lump of ice, and when utter exhaus- 
tion sometimes vanquished us and put us to sleep we 
found our boots frozen to the ground on waking up. 
Quite a number of soldiers suffered from frost-bitten 
limbs ; it was mostly their toes that were frost-bitten. 
They had to be taken to the hospital. The soldiers 
on duty fired incessantly so as to keep their fingers 
warm. 

Not all the soldiers are as a rule kept ready to 
give battle. If no attack is expected or intended, only 
sentries occupy the trench. About three yards apart 



CHRISTMAS IN THE TRENCHES 159 

a man is posted behind his protective shield of steel. 
Nevertheless all the men are in the trench. The sen- 
tries keep their section under a continual fire, espe- 
cially when it is cold and dark. The fingers get warm 
when one pulls the trigger. Of course, one cannot 
aim in the darkness, and the shots are fired at random. 
The sentry sweeps his section so that no hostile pa- 
trol can approach, for he is never safe in that thicket. 
Thus it happens that the firing is generally more vio- 
lent at night than at day; but there is never an inter- 
val. The rifles are fired continually; the bullets keep 
whistling above our trench and patter against the 
branches. The mines, too, come flying over at night, 
dropping at a high angle. Everybody knows the 
scarcely audible thud, and knows at once that it is a 
mine without seeing anything. He warns the others 
by calling out, " Mine coming ! " and everybody looks 
in the darkness for the " glow-worm," i.e., the burn- 
ing fuse of the mine. The glowing fuse betrays the 
direction of the mine, and there are always a few short 
seconds left to get round some corner. The same is 
the case with the hand grenades. They, too, betray 
the line of their flight at night by their burning fuse. 
If they do not happen to arrive in too great numbers 
one mostly succeeds in getting out of their way. In 
daylight that is not so hard because one can overlook 
everything. It often happens that one cannot save one- 
self in time from the approaching hand grenade. In 
that case there is only one alternative — either to re- 
main alive or be torn to atoms. Should a hand grenade 
suddenly fall before one's feet one picks it up with- 
out hesitation as swiftly as possible and throws it away, 
if possible back into the enemy's trench. Often, how- 
ever, the fuse is of such a length that the grenade does 



160 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

not even explode after reaching the enemy's trench 
again, and the Frenchman throws it back again with 
fabulous celerity. In order to avoid the danger of 
having a grenade returned the fuse is made as short 
as possible, and yet a grenade will come back now and 
again in spite of all. To return a grenade is of course 
dangerous work, but a man has no great choice ; if he 
leaves the grenade where it drops he is lost, as he can- 
not run away; and he knows he will be crushed to 
atoms, and thus his only chance is to pick up the 
grenade and throw it away even at the risk of having 
the bomb explode in his hand. I know of hand grenades 
thrown by the French that flew hither and thither sev- 
eral times. One was thrown by the French and imme- 
diately returned ; it came back again in an instant, and 
again we threw it over to them; it did not reach the 
enemy's trench that time, but exploded in the air. 

Though in general the infantry bullets cannot do 
much damage while one is in the trench it happens daily 
that men are killed by ricochet bullets. The thousands 
of bullets that cut through the air every minute all 
pass above our heads. But some strike a tree or branch 
and glance off. If in that case they hit a man in 
the trench they cause terrible injuries, because they do 
not strike with their heads but lengthwise. Whenever 
we heard of dum-dum bullets we thought of those 
ricochet bullets, though we did not doubt that there 
were dum-dum bullets in existence. I doubt, however, 
if dum-dum bullets are manufactured in factories, for 
the following reasons : — first, because a dum-dum bul- 
let can easily damage the barrel of a rifle and make it 
useless ; secondly, because the average soldier would 
refuse to carry such ammunition, for if a man is cap- 
tured and such bullets are found on him, the enemy in 



CHRISTMAS IN THE TRENCHES 161 

whose power he is would punish him by the laws of war 
as pitilessly as such an inhuman practice deserves to 
be punished. Generally, of course, a soldier only exe- 
cutes his orders. 

However, there exist dum-dum bullets, as I mentioned 
before. They are manufactured by the soldiers them- 
selves. If the point is filed or cut off a German in- 
fantry bullet, so that the nickel case is cut through 
and the lead core is laid bare, the bullet explodes when 
striking or penetrating an object. Should a man be 
hit in the upper arm by such a projectile the latter, by 
its explosive force, can mangle the arm to such an ex- 
tent that it only hangs by a piece of skin. 

Christmas came along, and we still found ourselves 
at the same place without any hope of a change. We 
received all kinds of gifts from our relations at home 
and other people. We were at last able to change our 
underwear which we had worn for months. 

Christmas in the trenches! It was bitterly cold. 
We had procured a pine tree, for there were no fir trees 
to be had. We had decorated the tree with candles and 
cookies, and had imitated the snow with wadding. 

Christmas trees were burning everywhere in the 
trenches, and at midnight all the trees were lifted on to 
the parapet with their burning candles, and along the 
whole line German soldiers began to sing Christmas 
songs in chorus. " O, thou blissful, O, thou joyous, 
mercy bringing Christmas time ! " Hundreds of men 
were singing the song in that fearful wood. Not a 
shot was fired; the French had ceased firing along the 
whole line. That night I was with a company that 
was only five paces away from the enemy. The Christ- 
mas candles were burning brightly, and were renewed 
again and again. For the first time we heard no shots. 



162 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

From everywhere, throughout the forest, one could hear 
powerful carols come floatmg over — " Peace on 
earth — " 

The French left their trenches and stood on the 
parapet without any fear. There thej stood, quite 
overpowered by emotion, and all of them with cap in 
hand. We, too, had issued from our trenches. We ex- 
changed gifts with the French — chocolate, cigarettes, 
etc. They were all laughing, and so were we; why, 
we did not know. Then everybody went back to his 
trench, and incessantly the carol resounded, ever more 
solemnly, ever more longingly — " 0, thou blissful — " 

All around silence reigned ; even the murdered trees 
seemed to listen ; the charm continued, and one scarcely 
dared to speak. Why could it not always be as peace- 
ful? We thought and thought, we were as dreamers, 
and had forgotten everything about us. — Suddenly 
a shot rang out ; then another one was fired somewhere. 
The spell was broken. All rushed to their rifles. A 
rolling fire. Our Christmas was over. 

We took up again our old existence. A young in- 
fantryman stood next to me. He tried to get out of 
the trench. I told him : '' Stay here ; the French will 
shoot you to pieces." " I left a box of cigars up 
there, and must have it back." Another one told him 
to wait till things quieted down somewhat. " They 
won't hit me ; I have been here three months, and they 
never caught me yet." " As you wish ; go ahead ! " 

Scarcely had he put his head above the parapet when 
he tumbled back. Part of his brains was sticking to 
my belt. His cap flew high up into the air. His skull 
was shattered. He was dead on the spot. His trials 
were over. The cigars were later on fetched by an- 
other man. 



CHRISTMAS IN THE TRENCHES 163 

On the following Christmas day an army order was 
read out. We were forbidden to wear or have in our 
possession things of French origin; for, every soldier 
who was found in possession of such things would be 
put before a court-martial as a marauder by the 
French if they captured him. We were forbidden to 
use objects captured from the French, and we were 
especially forbidden to make use of woolen blankets, 
because the French were infected with scabies. Scabies 
is an itching skin disease, which it takes at least a 
week to cure. But the order had a contrary effect. 
If one was the owner of such an " itch-blanket " one 
had a chance of getting into the hospital for some days. 
The illness w^as not of a serious nature, and one was 
at least safe from bullets for a few days. Every day 
soldiers were sent to the hospital, and we, too, were 
watching for a chance to grab such a French blanket. 
What did a man care, if he could only get out of that 
hell! 



XX 



THE " ITCH " A SAVIOR 



On January 5th the Germans attacked along the 
whole forest front, and took more than 1800 prisoners. 
We alone had captured 700 men of the French infan- 
try regiment No. 120. The hand to hand fighting 
lasted till six o'clock at night. On that day I, together 
with another sapper, got into a trench section that 
was still being defended by eight Frenchmen. We 
could not back out, so we had to take up the unequal 
struggle. Fortunately we were well provided with 
hand grenades. We cut the fuses so short that they ex- 
ploded at the earliest moment. I threw one in the midst 
of the eight Frenchmen. They had scarcely escaped 
the first one, when the second arrived into which they 
ran. We utilized their momentary confusion by throw- 
ing five more in quick succession. We had reduced our 
opponents to four. Then we opened a rifle fire, creep- 
ing closer and closer up to them. Their bullets kept 
whistling above our heads. One of the Frenchmen was 
shot in the mouth ; three more were left. These turned 
to flee. In such moments one is seized with an inde- 
scribable rage and forgets all about the danger that 
surrounds one. W^e had come quite near to them, when 
the last one stumbled and fell forward on his face. In 
a trice I was on him; he fought desperately with his 
fists ; my mate was following the other two. I kept 
on wrestling with my opponent. He was bleeding from 

164 



THE "ITCH"— A SAVIOR 165 

his mouth ; I had knocked out some of his teeth. Then 
he surrendered and raised his hands. I let go and then 
had a good look at him. He was some 35 years old, 
about ten years older than myself. I now felt sorry for 
him. He pointed to his wedding ring, talking to me all 
the while. I understood what he wanted — he wanted 
to be kept alive. He handed me his bottle, inviting me 
to drink wine. He cried; maybe he thought of his 
wife and children. I pressed his hand, and he showed 
me his bleeding teeth. " You are a silly fellow," I 
told him ; " you have been lucky. The few missing teeth 
don't matter. For you the slaughtering is finished; 
come along ! " I was glad I had not killed him, and 
took him along myself so as to protect him from being 
ill-treated. When I handed him over he pressed my 
hand thankfully and laughed ; he was happy to be safe. 
However bad the time he might have as prisoner he 
would be better off at any rate than in the trenches. 
At least he had a chance of getting home again. 

In the evening we took some of the forbidden 
blankets, hundreds of which we had captured that day. 
Ten of us were lying in a shelter, all provided with 
blankets. Everybody wanted to get the " itch," how- 
ever strange that may sound. We undressed and rolled 
ourselves in those blankets. Twenty-four hours later 
little red pimples showed themselves all over the body, 
and twelve men reported sick. The blankets were used 
in the whole company, but all of them had not the de- 
sired effect. The doctor sent nine of us to the hos- 
pital at Montmedy, and that very evening we left the 
camp in high glee. The railroad depot at Apremont 
had been badly shelled; the next station was Chatel. 
Both places are a little more than three miles behind 
the front. At Apremont the prisoners were divided 



166 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

into sections. Some of the prisoners had their homes 
at Apremont. Their families were still occupying 
their houses, and the prisoners asked to be allowed to 
pay them a visit. I chanced to observe one of those 
meetings at Apremont. Two men of the landstrum led 
one of the prisoners to the house which he pointed out 
to them as his own. The young wife of the prisoner 
was sitting in the kitchen with her three children. We 
followed the men into the house. The woman became 
as white as a sheet when she beheld her husband sud- 
denly. They rushed to meet each other and fell into 
each other's arms. We went out, for we felt that we 
were not wanted. The wife had not been able to get 
the slightest signs from her husband for the last five 
months, for the German forces had been between her 
and him. He, on the other hand, had been in the trench 
for months knowing that his wife and children must 
be there, on the other side, very near, yet not to be 
reached. He did not know whether they were alive or 
dead. He heard the French shells scream above his 
head. Would they hit Apremont? He wondered 
whether it was his own house that had been set alight 
by a shell and was reddening the sky at night. He did 
not know. The uncertainty tortured him, and life be- 
came hell. Now he was at home, though only for a 
few hours. He had to leave again a prisoner ; but now 
he could send a letter to his wife by the field post. 
He had to take leave. She had nothing she could give 
him — no underwear, no food, absolutely nothing. She 
had lost all and had to rely on the charity of the sol- 
diers. She handed him her last money, but he returned 
it. We could not understand what they told each 
other. She took the money back; it was German 
money, five and ten pfennig pieces and some coppers 



THE " ITCH "— A SAVIOR 167 

— her whole belongings. We could no longer contain 
ourselves and made a collection among ourselves. We 
got more than ten marks together which we gave to 
the young woman. At first she refused to take it and 
looked at her husband. Then she took it and wanted 
to kiss our hands. We warded her off, and she ran 
to the nearest canteen and bought things. Returning 
with cigars, tobacco, matches, and sausage, she handed 
all over to her husband with a radiant face. She 
laughed, once again perhaps in a long time, and sent us 
grateful looks. The children clung round their father 
and kissed him again and again. She accompanied her 
husband, who carried two of the kiddies, one on each 
arm, while his wife carried the third child. Beaming 
with happiness the family marched along between the 
two landsturm men who had their bayonets fixed. 
When they had to take leave, all of them, parents and 
children began to weep. She knew that her husband 
was no longer in constant danger, and she was happy, 
for though she had lost much, she still had her most 
precious possessions. 

Thousands of poor men and women have met such a 
fate near their homes. 

Regular trains left ChateL We quitted the place 
at 11 o'clock at night, heartily glad to leave the Ar- 
gonnes behind us. We had to change trains at Vou- 
zieres, and took the train to Diedenhofen. There we 
saw twelve soldiers with fixed bayonets take along 
three Frenchmen. They were elderly men in civilian 
dress. We had no idea what it signified, so we entered 
into a conversation with one of our fellow travelers. 
He was a merchant, a Frenchman living at Vouzieres, 
and spoke German fluently. The merchant was on a 
business trip to Sedan, and told us that the three civilian 



168 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

prisoners were citizens of his town. He said : " We 
obtain our means of life from the German military au- 
thorities, but mostly we do not receive enough to live, 
and the people have nothing left of their own; all the 
cattle and food have been commandeered. Those three 
men refused to keep on working for the military author- 
ities, because they could not live on the things they were 
given. They were arrested and are now being trans- 
ported to Germany. Of course, we don't know what 
will happen to them." 

The man also told us that all the young men had been 
taken away by the Germans ; all of them had been in- 
terned in Germany. 

At Sedan we had to wait for five hours ; for hos- 
pital trains were constantly arriving. It was 2 o'clock 
in the afternoon of the following day when we reached 
Montmedy, where we went to the hospital. There all 
our clothes were disinfected in the " unlousing estab- 
lishment," and we could take a proper bath. We were 
lodged in the large barracks. There one met people 
from all parts of the front, and all of them had only 
known the same misery ; there was not one among them 
who did not curse this war. All of them were glad to 
be in safety, and all of them tried their best to be 
*' sick " as long as possible. Each day we were twice 
treated with ointment; otherwise we were at liberty to 
walk about the place. 

One day we paid a visit to the fortress of Mont- 
medy high up on a hill. Several hundreds of prisoners 
were just being fed there. They were standing about 
in the yard of the fortress and were eating their soup. 
One of the prisoners came straight up to me. I had 
not noticed him particularly, and recognized him only 
when he stood before me. He was the man I had strug-» 



THE '* ITCH "— A SAVIOR 1^^ 

gled with on January 5th, and we greeted each other 
cordiaUy. He had brought along a prisoner who spoke 
German well and who interpreted for us all we had 
to say to each other. He had seen me standmg about 
and had recognized me at once. Again and agam he 
told me how glad he was to be a prisoner. Like my- 
self he was a soldier because he had to be, and not 
from choice. At that time we had fought with each 
other in blind rage; for a moment we had been deadly 
enemies. I felt happy at having stayed my fury at 
that time, and again I became aware of the utter idiocy 
of that barbarous slaughter. We separated with a 

firm handshake. 

A fortnight I remained at the hospital ; then I had 
to return to the front. We had been treated well 
at the hospital, so we started on our return journey 
with mixed feelings. As soon as we arrived at Chatel, 
the terminus, we heard the incessant gun fire. It was 
no use kicking, we had to go into the forest again. 
When we reached our old camp, we found that different 
troops were occupying it. Our company had left, no- 
body knew for what destination. Wherever we asked, 
nobody could give us any information. So we had to 
go back to the command of our corps, the headquarters 
of which were at Corney at that time. We left Chatel 
again by a hospital train, and reached Corney after 
half an hour's journey. Corney harbored the General 
Staff of the 16th Army Corps, and we thought they 
surely ought to know where our company was. Gen- 
eral von Mudra and his officers had taken up their 
quarters in a large villa. The house was guarded by 
three double sentries. We showed our pay books and 
hospital certificates, and an orderly led us to a spacious 
room. It was the telephone room. There the wires 



170 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

from all the divisional fronts ran together, and the 
apparatus were in constant use. A sergeant-major 
looked into the lists and upon the maps. In two min- 
utes he had found our company. He showed us on the 
map where it was fighting and where its camp was. 
" The camp is at the northern end of Verennes," he 
said, " and the company belongs to the 34th division ; 
formerly it was part of the 33rd. The position it is 
in is in the villages of Vauquois and Boureuilles." 
Then he explained to us on the map the direction we 
were to take, and we could trot off. We returned by 
rail to Chatel, and went on foot from there to Apre- 
mont. We spent the night in the half destroyed depot 
of Apremont. In order to get to Varennes we had to 
march to the south. On our way we saw French pris- 
oners mending the roads. Most of them were black 
colonial troops in picturesque uniforms. On that road 
Austrian motor batteries were posted. Three of those 
30.5-cm. howitzers were standing behind a rocky slope, 
but did not fire. When at noon we reached the height 
of Varennes we saw the whole wide plan in front of 
us. Varennes itself was immediately in front of us in 
the valley. A little farther up on the heights was 
Vauquois. No houses were to be seen; one could only 
notice a heap of rubbish through the field glasses. 
Shells kept exploding in that rubbish heap continually, 
and we felt a cold sweat run down our backs at the 
thought that the place up there was our destination. 
We had scarcely passed the ridge when some shells 
exploded behind us. At that place the French were 
shooting with artillery at individuals. As long as 
Vauquois had been in their power they had been able 
to survey the whole country, and we comprehended why 
that heap of rubbish was so bitterly fought for. We 



THE "ITCH"— A SAVIORT 171 

ran down the slope and found ourselves in Varennes. 
The southern portion of the village had been shelled to 
pieces and gutted. Only most of the chimneys which 
were built apart from the bottom upward, had re- 
mained standing, thin blackened forms rising out of the 
ruins into the air. Everywhere we saw groups of sol- 
diers collecting the remaining more expensive metals 
which were sent to Germany. Among other things 
church-bells melted into shapeless lumps were also 
loaded on wagons and taken away. All the copper, 
brass, tin, and lead that could be got was collected. 



XXI 

IN THE HELL OF VAUQUOIS 

We soon found our company, and our comrades told 
us what hell they had gotten into. The next morning 
our turn came, too. We had to reach the position be- 
fore day-break, for as soon as it got light the French 
kept all approaches under constant fire. There was 
no trace of trenches at Vauquois. All that could be 
seen were pieces of stones. Not a stone had literally 
remained on the other at Vauquois. That heap of 
ruins, once a village, had changed hands no less than 
fifteen times. When we arrived half of the place was 
in the possession of the Germans. But the French 
dominated the highest point, whence they could sur- 
vey' the whole country for many miles around. In the 
absence of a trench we sought cover behind stones, for 
it was absolutely impossible to construct trenches ; the 
artillery was shooting everything to pieces. 

Thus the soldiers squatted behind piles of stones 
and fired as fast as their rifles would allow. Guns 
of all sizes were bombarding the village incessantly. 
There was an army of corpses. Frenchmen and Ger- 
mans, all lying about pell-mell. At first we thought 
that that terrible state of things was only temporary, 
but after a few days we recognized that a slaughter 
worse than madness was a continuous state of things 
at that place. Day and night, ever the same. With 
Verdun as a base of operations the French continually 

172 



IN THE HELL OF VAUQUOIS 173 

brought up fresh masses of troops. They had carried 
along a field railroad the heavy pieces of the neighbor- 
ing forts of Verdun, and in the spring of 1915 an of- 
fensive of a local, but murderous kind was begun. The 
artillery of both sides bombarded the place to such an 
extent that not a foot of ground could be found that 
was not torn up by shells. Thousands upon thousands 
of shells of all sizes were employed. The bombardment 
from both sides lasted three days and three nights, un- 
til at last not a soldier, neither French nor German, 
was left in the vilage. Both sides had been obliged to 
retreat before the infernal fire of the opponent, for 
not a man would have escaped alive out of that inferno. 
The whole slope and height were veiled in an impene- 
trable smoke. In the evening of the third day the ene- 
my's bombardment died down a little, and we were 
ordered to go forward again into the shell torn ruins. 
It was not yet quite dark when the French advanced in 
close order. 

We were in possession of almost the whole of the 
village, and had placed one machine-gun next to the 
other. We could see the projectiles of the artillery 
burst in great numbers among the reserves of the at- 
tackers. Our machine-guns literally mowed down the 
first ranks. Five times the French renewed their at- 
tack during that night, their artillery meanwhile mak- 
ing great gaps in our ranks. We soldiers calculated 
that the two sides had together some three or four thou- 
sand men killed in that one night. Next morning the 
French eased their attacks, and their guns treated us 
again to the accustomed drum fire. We stood it until 
10 o'clock in the morning; then we retreated again 
without awaiting orders, leaving innumerable dead men 
behind. Again the French advanced in the fafce of a 



174 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

violent German artillery fire, and effected a lodgment 
at the northern edge of the village of Vauquois that used 
to be. A few piles of stones was all that still be- 
longed to us. We managed to put a few stones before 
us as a protection. The guns of neither side could 
hurt us or them, for they, the enemy, were but ten 
paces away. But the country behind us was plowed 
by projectiles. In face of the machine gun fire it w^as 
found impossible to bring up ammunition. 

The sappers undid the coils of rope worn round 
their bodies, and three men or more crept back with 
them. One of them was killed ; the others arrived safely 
and attached the packets of cartridges to the rope. 
Thus we brought up the ammunition by means of a 
rope running in a circle, until we had enough or till 
the rope was shot through. At three o'clock in the 
afternoon we attacked again, but found it impossible to 
rise from the ground on account of the hail of bullets. 
Everybody was shouting, " Sappers to the front w^ith 
hand grenades ! " Not a sapper stirred. We are only 
human, after all. 

A sergeant-major of the infantry came creeping 
up. He looked as if demented, his eyes were blood- 
shot. "You're a sapper?" "Yes," "Advance!" 
"Alone?" "We're coming along!" We had to 
roar at each other in order to make ourselves under- 
stood in the deafening, confounded row. Another sap- 
per lay beside me. When the sergeant-major saw that 
he could do nothing with me he turned to the other 
fellow. That man motioned to him to desist, but the 
sergeant-major got ever more insistent, until the sap- 
per showed him his dagger, and then our superior slung 
his hook. Some twenty hand grenades were lying in 
front of us. Ten of them I had attached to my belt 



IN THE HELL OF VAUQUOIS 175 

for aU emergencies. I said to myself that if all of 
them exploded there would not be much left of me. I 
had a hghted cigar in my mouth. I lit one bomb after 
the other and threw them over to some Frenchmen who 
were working a machine-gun in front of me, behind a 
heap of stones. All around me the bullets of the ma- 
chine-guns were splitting the stones. I had already 
thrown four grenades, but all of them had overshot the 
mark. I took some stones and threw them to find out 
how far I would have to throw in order to hit the 
fire spitting machine in front. My aim got more ac- 
curate each time until I hit the barrel of the gun. ' If 
it had only been a hand grenade," I thought. An in- 
fantryman close to me was shot through the shell ot 
one ear, half of which was cut in pieces; the blood 
was streaming down his neck. I had no more material 
for bandaging except some wadding, which I attached 
to his wound. In my pocket I had a roll of insulat- 
ing ribbon, rubber used to insulate wires; with that 1 
bandaged him. He pointed to the machine-gun. 
Thereupon I gave him my cigar, telling him to keep 
it well alight so as to make the fuse which I desired 
to light by it burn well. In quick succession I threw 
six hand grenades. I don't know how many of them 
took effect, but the rags of uniforms flying about and a 
demolished machine-gun said enough. When we ad- 
vanced later on I observed three dead men lymg round 
the machine-gun. 

That was only one example of the usual, daily oc- 
currences that happen day and night, again and again 
and everywhere, and the immense number of such ac- 
tions of individual soldiers makes the enormous loss of 
human life comprehensible. 

We were still lying there without proceeding to the 



176 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

attack. Again ammunition was brought up by ropes 
from the rear. A hand grenade duel ensued ; hundreds 
of hand grenades were thrown by both sides. Things 
could not go on long like that ; we felt that something 
was bound to happen. Without receiving an order and 
yet as if by command we all jumped up and advanced 
with the dagger in our hands right through the mur- 
derous fire, and engaged in the maddest hand to hand 
fighting. The daggers, sharp as razors, were plunged 
into head after head, chest after chest. One stood on 
corpses in order to make other men corpses. New ene- 
mies came running up. One had scarcely finished with 
one when three more appeared on the scene. 

We, too, got reinforcements. One continued to 
murder and expected to be struck down oneself the next 
moment. One did not care a cent for one's life, but 
fought like an animal. I stumbled and fell on the 
stones. At that very moment I caught sight of a gi- 
gantic Frenchman before me who was on the point of 
bringing his sapper's spade do^Ti on me. I moved aside 
with lightning speed, and the blow fell upon the stone. 
In a moment my dagger was in his stomach more than 
up to the hilt. He went down with a horrible cry, roll- 
ing in his blood in maddening pain. I put the bloody 
dagger back in my boot and took hold of the spade. 
All around me I beheld new enemies. The spade I 
found to be a handy weapon. I hit one opponent be- 
tween head and shoulder. The sharp spade half went 
through the body; I heard the cracking of the bones 
that were struck. Another enemy was close to me.^ 
I dropped the spade and took hold of my dagger again. 
All happened as in a flash. My opponent struck me in 
the face, and the blood came pouring out of my mouth 
and nose. We began to wrestle with each other. I 



IN THE HELL OF VAUQUOIS 177 

had the dagger in my right hand. We had taken hold 
of each other round the chest. He was no stronger 
than myself, but he held me as firmly as I held him. 
We tried to fight each other with our teeth. I had 
the dagger in my hand, but could not strike. Who 
was it to be? He or I? One of us two was sure to 
go down. I got the dagger in such a position that its 
point rested on his back. Then I pressed his trembling 
body still more firmly to myself. He fastened his 
teeth in my shaggy beard, and I felt a terrible pain. 
I pressed him still more firmly so that his ribs almost 
began to crack and, summoning all my strength, I 
pushed the dagger into the right side of his back, just 
below the shoulderblade. In frightful pain he turned 
himself round several times, fell on his face, and lay 
groaning on the ground. I withdrew my dagger; he 
bled to death like many thousands. 

We had pushed back the French for some yards when 
we received strong assistance. After a short fight the 
enemy turned and fled, and we followed him as far as 
the southern edge of the village. There the French 
made a counterattack with fresh bodies of men and 
threw us back again for some 50 yards. Then the at- 
tack was halted, and we found ourselves again where we 
had been at the beginning of that four days' slaughter. 
Thousands of corpses were covering the ruins of Vau- 
quois, all sacrificed in vain. 



XXII 

SENT ON FURLOUGH 

For four days and nights, without food and sleep, we 
had been raging hke barbarians, and had spent all our 
strength. We were soon relieved. To our astonish- 
ment we were relieved by cavalry. They were Saxon 
chasseurs on horseback who were to do duty as infan- 
trymen. It had been found impossible to make good 
the enormous losses of the preceding days by sending 
up men of the depot. So they had called upon the 
cavalry who, by the way, were frequently employed dur- 
ing that time. The soldiers who had been in a life and 
death struggle for four days were demoralized to such 
an extent that they had no longer any fighting value. 
We were relieved very quietly, and could then return to 
our camp. We did not hear before the next day that 
during the period described our company had suffered 
a total loss of 49 men. The fate of most of them was 
unknown; one did not know whether they were dead or 
prisoners or whether they lay wounded in some ambu- 
lance station. 

The village of Varennes was continually bombarded 
by French guns of large size. Several French families 
were still living in a part of the village that had not 
been so badly damaged. Every day several of the ene- 
my's S8-cm. shells came down in that quarter. Though 
many inhabitants had been wounded by the shells the 

people could not be induced to leave their houses. 

178 



SENT ON FURLOUGH 179 

Our quarters were situated near a very steep slope 
and were thus protected against artillery fire. They 
consisted of wooden shanties built by ourselves. We 
had brought up furniture from everywhere and had 
made ourselves at home; for Varennes was, after all, 
nearly two miles behind the front. But all the shanties 
were not occupied, for the number of our men dimin- 
ished from day to day. At last the longed-for men 
from the depot arrived. Many new sapper formations 
had to be got together for all parts of the front, and it 
was therefore impossible to supply the existing sapper 
detachments with their regular reserves. Joyfully we 
greeted the new arrivals. They were, as was always 
the case, men of very different ages; a young boyish 
volunteer of 17 years would march next to an old man 
of the landsturra who had likewise volunteered. All of 
them, without any exception, have bitterly repented of 
their " free choice " and made no secret of it. " It's 
a shame," a comrade told me, " that those seventeen- 
year-old children should be led to the slaughter, and 
that their young life is being poisoned, as it needs must 
be in these surroundings ; scarcely out of boyhood, they 
are being shot down like mad dogs." 

It took but a few days for the volunteers — all of 
them without an exception — to repent bitterly of their 
resolve, and every soldier who had been in the war for 
any length of time would reproach them when they gave 
expression to their great disappointment. " But you 
have come voluntarily," they were told ; " we had to 
go, else we should have been off long ago." Yet we 
knew that all those young people had been under some 
influence and had been given a wrong picture of the 
war. 

Those soldiers who had been in the war from the 



180 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

start who had not been wounded, but had gone through 
all the fighting, were gradually all sent home on fur- 
lough for ten days. Though our company contained- 
but 14 unwoundcd soldiers it was very hard to obtain 
the furlough. We had lost several times the number of 
men on our muster-roll, but all our officers were still in 
good physical condition. 

It was not until September that I managed to obtain 
furlough at the request of my relations, and I left for 
home with a resolve that at times seemed to me impos- 
sible to execute. All went well until I got to Dieden- 
hofen. 

As far as that station the railroads are operated by 
the army authorities. At Diedenhofen they are taken 
over by the Imperial Railroads of Alsace-Lorraine and 
the Prusso-Hessian State Railroads. So I had to 
change, and got on a train that went to Saarbruecken. 
I had scarcely taken a seat in a compartment in my 
dirty and ragged uniform when a conductor came along 
to inspect the tickets. Of course, I had no ticket ; I 
had only a furlough certificate and a pass which had 
been handed to me at the field railroad depot of Chatel. 
The conductor looked at the papers and asked me again 
for my ticket. I drew his attention to my pass. 
" That is only good for the territory of the war opera- 
tions," he said ; " you are now traveling on a state rail- 
road and have to buy a ticket." 

I told him that I should not buy a ticket, and asked 
him to inform the station manager. " You," I told 
him, " only act according to instructions. I am not 
angry with you for asking of me what I shall do under 
no circumstances." He went off and came back with 
the manager. The latter also inspected my papers and 
told me I had to pay for the journey. " I have no 



SENT ON FURLOUGH 181 

means for that purpose," I told him. " For these last 
three years I have been in these clothes " (I pointed to 
my uniform), "and for three years I have therefore 
been without any income. Whence am I to get the money 
to pay for this journey.f^" "If you have no money 
for traveling you can't take furlough." I thought 
to myself that if they took me deep into France they 
were in conscience bound to take me back to where they 
had fetched me. Was I to be a soldier for three years 
and fight for the Fatherland for more than a year only 
to find that now they refused the free use of their rail- 
roads to a ragged soldier? I explained that I was not 
going to pay, that I could not save the fare from the 
few pfennigs' pay. I refused explicitly to pay a sol- 
dier's journey with my private money, even if — as 
was the case here — that soldier was myself. Finally I 
told him, " I must request you to inform the military 
railroad commander ; the depot command attends to sol- 
diers, not you." He sent me a furious look through his 
horn spectacles and disappeared. Two civilians were 
sitting in the same compartment with me ; they thought 
it an unheard-of thing that a soldier coming from the 
front should be asked for his fare. Presently the depot 
commander came up with a sergeant. He demanded to 
see my furlough certificate, pay books, and all my other 
papers. 

" Have you any money ? " 

" No." 

" Where do you come from ? " 

" From Chatel in the Argonnes." 

" How long were you at the front? *' 

" In the fourteenth month." 

" Been wounded? " 

" No." 



182 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 



66 



Have you no money at all? " 

No ; you don't want money at the front." 

" The fare must be paid. If you can't, the coftipany 
must pay. Please sign this paper." 

I signed it without looking at it. It was all one to 
me what I signed, as long as they left me alone. Then 
the sergeant came back. 

" You can not travel in that compartment ; you must 
also not converse with travelers. You have to take the 
first carriage marked ' Only for the military.' Get into 
that." 

" I see," I observed ; " in the dogs' compartment." 

He turned round again and said, " Cut out those re- 
marks." 

The train started, and I arrived safely home. After 
the first hours of meeting all at home again had passed 
I found myself provided with faultless underwear and 
had taken the urgently needed bath. Once more I could 
put on the civilian dress I had missed for so long a 
time. All of it appeared strange to me. I began to 
think. Under no conditions was I going to return to 
the front. But I did not know how I should succeed 
in getting across the frontier. I could choose between 
two countries only — Switzerland and Holland. It 
was no use going to Switzerland, for that country was 
surrounded by belligerent states, and it needed only a 
little spark to bring Switzerland into the war, and then 
there would be no loophole for me. There was only the 
nearest country left for me to choose — Holland. But 
how was I to get there? There was the rub. I con- 
cocted a thousand plans and discarded them again. 
Nobody, not even my relatives, must know about it. 



XXIII 

THE FLIGHT TO HOLLAND 

My furlough soon neared its end; there were only 
four days left. I remembered a good old friend in a 
Rhenish town. My plan was made. Without my fam- 
ily noticing it I packed a suit, boots, and all necessities, 
and told them at home that I was going to visit my 
friend. To him I revealed my intentions, and he was 
ready to help me in every possible manner. 

My furlough was over. I put on my uniform, and 
my relations were left in the belief that I was returning 
to the front. I went, however, to my friend and 
changed into civilian clothes. I destroyed my uniform 
and arms, throwing the lot into the river near by. 
Thus having destroyed all traces, I left and arrived at 
Cologne after some criss-cross traveling. Thence I 
journeyed to Duesseldorf and stayed at night at an 
hotel. I had already overstayed my leave several days. 
Thousands of thoughts went through my brain. I was 
fully aware that I would lose my life if everything did 
not come to pass according to the program. I intended 
to cross the frontier near Venlo (Holland). I knew, 
however, that the frontier was closely guarded. 

The country round Venlo, the course of the frontier 
in those parts were unknown to me; in fact, I was a 
complete stranger. I made another plan. I returned 
to my friend and told him that it was absolutely neces- 
sary for me to get to know the frontier district and to 

procure a map showing the terrain. I also informed 

183 



184. A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

him that I had to get hold of a false identification pa- 
per. He gave me a landsturm certificate which was to 
identify me in case of need. In my note-book I drew 
the exact course of the frontier from a railway map, 
and then I departed again. 

Dead tired, I reached Crefeld that night by the last 
train. I could not go on. So I went into the first 
hotel and hired a room. I wrote the name that was on 
the false paper into the register and went to sleep. At 
six o'clock in the morning there was a knock at my 
door. 

"Who is there?" 

" The police." 

"The police?" 

" Yes ; the political police." 

I opened the door. 

*' Here lives ... ? (he mentioned the name in which 
I had registered). 

" Yes." 

" Have you any identification papers? " 

" If you please," I said, handing him the landsturm 
certificate. 

" Everything in order ; pardon me for having dis- 
turbed you." 

" You're welcome ; you're welcome," I hastened to 
reply, and thought how polite the police was. 

That well-known leaden weight fell from my chest, 
but I had no mind to go to sleep again. Whilst I was 
dressing I heard him visit all the guests of the hotel. 
I had not thought of the customary inspection of 
strangers in frontier towns. It was a good thing I had 
been armed for that event. 

Without taking breakfast (my appetite had van- 
ished) I went to the depot and risked traveling to 



THE FLIGHT TO HOLLAND 185 

Kempten in spite of the great number of policemen that 
were about. I calculated by the map that the frontier 
was still some fifteen miles away. I had not much bag- 
gage with me, only a small bag, a raincoat and an um- 
brella. I marched along the country road and in five 
hours I reached the village of Herongen. To the left 
of that place was the village of Niederhofen. Every- 
where I saw farmers working in the fields. They would 
have to inform me of how the line of the frontier ran 
and how it was being watched. In order to procure 
that information I selected only those people who, to 
judge by their appearance, were no " great lights of the 
church." 

Without arousing suspicion I got to know that the 
names of the two places were " Herongen " and " Nie- 
derhofen," and that a troop of cuirassiers were quar- 
tered at Herongen. The man told me that the soldiers 
were lodged in the dancing hall of the Schwarz Inn. 
Presently I met a man who was cutting a hedge. He 
w^as a Hollander who went home across the frontier 
every night ; he had a passport. " You are the man 
for me," I thought to myself, and said aloud that I had 
met several Hollanders in that part of the country (he 
was the first one), and gave him a cigar. I mentioned 
to him that I had visited an acquaintance in the Schwarz 
Inn at Herongen. 

" Yes," he said ; *' they are there." 

" But my friend had to go on duty, so I am having 
a look round." 

" They have got plenty to do near the frontier." 

"Indeed?" 

" Every thirty minutes and oftener a cavalry patrol, 
and every quarter of an hour an infantry patrol go 
scouting along the frontier." 



186 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

" And how does the frontier run ? " I queried, offer- 
ing him a light for his cigar. 

He showed me with his hand. 

" Here in front of you, then right through the woods, 
then up there; those high steeples towering over the 
woods belong to the factories of Venlo." 

I knew enough. After a few remarks I left him. 
All goes according to my program, I thought. But 
there was a new undertaking before me. I had to ven- 
ture close enough to the frontier to be able to watch the 
patrols without being seen by them. That I succeeded 
in doing during the following night. 

I hid in the thick underwood; open country was in 
front of me. I remained at that spot for three days 
and nights. It rained and at night it was very chilly. 
On the evening of the third day I resolved to execute 
my plan that night. 

Regularly every fifteen minutes a patrol of from three 
to six soldiers arrived. When it had got dark I 
changed my place for one more to the right, some five 
hundred yards from the frontier. I said to myself that 
I would have to venture out as soon as it got a little 
lighter. In the darkness I could not see anything. It 
would have to be done in twilight. I had rolled my over- 
coat into a bundle to avoid making a noise against the 
trees. I advanced just after a patrol had passed. I 
went forward slowly and stepped out cautiously with- 
out making a noise. Then I walked with ever increas- 
ing rapidity. Suddenly a patrol appeared on my right. 
The frontier was about three hundred yards away from 
me. The patrol had about two hundred yards to the 
point of the frontier nearest to me. Victory would fall 
to the best and swiftest runner. The patrol consisted 
of five men; they fired several times. That did not 



AMERICA AND SAFETY 191 

by the coal. It got worse and worse, and I had to use 
all my strength to keep the coal away from me. The 
big lumps wounded me all about the head; I felt the 
blood run over my face. My store of bread was nearly 
finished, and the water tasted stale. I lit a match and 
saw that the bread was quite black. 

I wondered whether we were nearly there. No more 
bread. I felt my strength leave me more and more. 
The boat went up and down, and I was thrown hither 
and thither for hours, for days. I felt I could not 
stand it much longer. I wondered how long we had 
been on the water. I had no idea. I was awfully hun- 
gr}^ Days passed again. I noticed that I had be- 
come quite thin. 

At last the engines stopped again. But soon we 
were off once more. After long, long hours the boat 
stopped. I listened. All was quiet. Then I heard 
them unloading with cranes. 

New York ! — After a while I crept forth. I found 
that half of the coal had been taken away. Not a soul 
was there. Then I climbed down a ladder into the 
stokehole; nobody was there either. I noticed a pail 
and filled it with warm water. With it I hastened into 
a dark corner and washed myself. I was terribly tired 
and had to hold on to something so as not to collapse. 
Wlien I had washed I took my pocket mirror and gazed 
at my face. My own face frightened me; for I looked 
pale as a sheet and like a bundle of skin and bones. 
I wondered how long the voyage had lasted. I had 
to laugh in spite of my misery — I had crossed the 
ocean and had never seen it! 

The problem was now to get on land. What should 
I say if they caught me? I thought that if I were 
caught now I should simply say I wanted to get to 



Id2 A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE 

Holland as a stowaway in order to reach Germany. In 
that case, I thought, they would quickly enough put 
me back on land. With firm resolve I climbed on deck 
which was full of workmen. 

I noticed a stair-way leading to the warehouse. 
Gathering all my strength I loitered up to it in a care- 
less way and — two minutes later I had landed. I 
found myself in the street outside the warehouse. 

Up to that time I had kept on my legs. But now my 
strength left me, and I dropped on the nearest steps. 

It was only then that I became aware of the fact 
that I was not in New York, but in Philadelphia. It 
was 5 o'clock in the afternoon of April 5th, 1916. I 
had reckoned on twelve days and the voyage had taken 
eighteen. 

Physically a wreck, I became acquainted with na- 
tive Americans in the evening. They afforded me every 
assistance that one human being can give to another. 
One of those most noble-minded humanitarians took me 
to New York. I could not leave my room for a week 
on account of the hardships I had undergone; I recov- 
ered only slowly. 

But to-day I have recovered sufficiently to take up 
again in the ranks of the American Socialists the fight 
against capitalism the extirpation of which must be 
the aim of every class-conscious worker. A relentless 
struggle to the bitter end is necessary to show the rul- 
ing war provoking capitalist caste who is the stronger, 
so that it no longer may be in the power of that class 
to provoke such a murderous war as that in which the 
working-class of Europe is now bleeding to death. 



i 



